


The Devil You Know

by mad_martha



Series: All Roads Lead To Haven [1]
Category: Supernatural, Valdemar Series - Mercedes Lackey
Genre: Bawdy Humour, Crossover, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Dead Parents, Drug Use, Fantasy Law Enforcement, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Stealth Crossover, Supernatural Unpleasantness, Swearing, The Author Regrets Everything, description of violence, discussion of drug abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-30
Updated: 2015-04-30
Packaged: 2018-03-26 12:49:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 116,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3851578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mad_martha/pseuds/mad_martha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Watch Captain Dean Winchester joins forces with warrior priest Castiel to track down a demon causing a series of fires in Haven city.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MadamBeetroot](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadamBeetroot/gifts).



> To avoid dealing with the official storylines in the Valdemar novels as much as possible, please assume that this occurs sometime after the reign of King Theron (Brightly Burning) but before Tarma and Kethry's era (The Oathbound). As regards the Winchesters, I've tinkered with their ages a little – Dean is twenty-four in this story, while Sam is eighteen and Adam is sixteen.
> 
> In the interests of complete transparency, I stopped watching Supernatural at the end of Season 5, and although I've read most of the Valdemar books, I haven't read the most recent Collegium Chronicles series. I've taken some liberties with the Valdemar canon, especially in relation to things like the set-up of the Watch (who are only mentioned in passing in the books) and the Guard, and the layout and ethnic make-up of Haven. Mostly I've just invented things to fill in any gaps. The important stuff remains canon.

"You're late."

"I know."

"Can't say I didn't call you. Jo's gone on ahead."

"Yeah, I know."

"I left you a bowl of porridge on the side of the range. It's probably solid by now."

"Thanks, Ellen." Dean dropped a kiss on her cheek.

Something that might have been the beginnings of a smile twitched at the corner of his landlady's mouth, but he knew her too well to take it for granted. Just as well really -

"Don't think that'll let you out of paying your laundry bill - or should I say your _brother's_ laundry bill?" She arched an eyebrow at him knowingly, and he grimaced.

"Add it to my slate. He can settle it with me later."

"Or, you know, never. Like he usually does. When's that kid going to quit studying and do some real work?"

Ellen and most of their acquaintance thought Dean was insane for allowing his two brothers to study at the Collegia when there were plenty of apprenticeships to be had in the trades in this part of the city. Which he understood in a way, but since he didn't have an answer that would please her (his father had wanted Sam and Adam to study) Dean focussed on forcing down his bowl of glutinous porridge. He hated porridge, but if he didn't eat now his temper would be out of control by midmorning, and if the Provost Marshal's paymasters were true to their usual form, the Watch's stipends wouldn't be doled out until past noon. He didn't have enough coin in his belt pouch for more than a flask of cold tea before then.

"We'll have to give last night's wash a second dunk in the tub," Ellen told him reluctantly. Which meant she would have to charge him twice. "It was still stinking of smoke when Podina took it out. You can't wear it again like that - if it dries like that you'll still be smelling smoke on it this time next year. I know how you feel about that."

Dean put the porridge bowl aside, all appetite gone. "Thanks, Ellen."

"It's what you pay me for," she said dryly. "Have a good day."

 

xXx

 

It was raining again when he stepped outside. Rain did not improve the back streets and alleys of lower Haven. All the detritus that routinely gathered in every nook, cranny, hole, corner and crevice turned to sludge and, given enough time and rainwater, formed a steady stream of foul slurry running down the middle of the walkways to join wider rivers of it out on the sides of the roads. Eventually it would somehow make its way down to the river - the mighty Terilee - and add to the dangerous soup of muck and disease that swirled through it, in defiance of the city ordinances.

Dean didn't really care about this. His sole concerns relating to the weather revolved around how difficult it would make the jobs of his constables in the Watch that day, and how on earth a property fire such as the one he'd attended the night before could have raged so wildly out of control when there was so much water dropping on it from above.

That the fire had been set was almost a given. The question was why; a tiny, impoverished temple of an obscure goddess, located in a run-down area, hardly suggested financial gains for anyone. Even the minuscule patch of land it had stood upon was hardly worth the effort. The main problem, Dean acknowledged to himself wearily as he jogged through the sodden streets, would be finding anyone who could answer questions. The three priests at the temple had been elderly and infirm; two had been dead before they were pulled from the building, and the third might not have survived the night.

The Ropewalk Watch House was bustling when he walked through the doors. This was one of the three hectic crossover points during the day when the shifts changed; night shift was handing over to day shift. Technically Dean was on the third, twilight shift this moon, but the fire necessitated him coming in early to meet with the other two shift commanders; he was also captain of this Watch House.

The bars on his uniform were fairly new; being in charge here was not. The previous captain had spent most of the first six months Dean had been here sleeping off the excesses of his poppy habit under his desk. Then one day his luck ran out when one of the District Commanders arrived unexpectedly to find Dean and Henryks, the second shift commander, handling a crisis without him. Dean had a mere two weeks' seniority over Henryks and a whole month over the third shift commander, Jody. The hot coal of the captaincy had been dropped into his lap there and then.

It was a pain in the ass, as he would tell anyone who would listen, but an extra crown a month on his stipend was undeniably useful when he was still supporting two younger brothers. Especially as one of them seemed to have a bottomless appetite for books and the other went through clothes faster than a court dandy.

Jody was already signing her constables out one by one, checking all their notes were written up and filed before they left, while in the background Dean could hear Henryks trading sharp banter with his crew as he called the roll. Old Rufus, who had manned the front desk overnight, was sourly giving Jo a lecture on procedures and patience as he reluctantly handed over to her. He didn't approve of rookies being given positions of responsibility and Dean had heard chapter and verse on Jo's alleged flightiness from Rufus more than once. He had a point, as Dean had quietly acknowledged to Jody and Henryks, but they were short-handed and there was no one to permanently partner Jo with on patrol right now. She was young and needed supervision, so she got to man the desk and partner one of the lieutenants when they went out and about, both of which chafed at her badly.

But sour veterans and impatient rookies were the least of Dean's problems. The stink of smoke was still hanging around the Watch House and the chief of the local volunteer fire crew, Elkins, was leaning wearily against the desk. His clothes, skin and hair were caked with wet ash and debris from the temple fire.

"Why haven't you gone home?" Dean demanded of him by way of greeting.

Elkins snorted sourly. "Been waiting for Travis's team to muster and take over," he retorted. "Fire might be out, but there's a dozen merchants in the row demanding we check every attic and outhouse for sparks."

"I sent two of my people door to door three candlemarks ago," Jody said, without looking up from her paperwork, "and told all those lazy, penny-licking fools to check their own damned attics if they're that worried about secondary fires. And Henryks is sending one of his team out now to dismiss the fire crew. Like we don't all have better things to do than hold people's hands all day."

Dean slapped Elkins on shoulder, and wished he hadn't when he saw the colour of his hand. "The Beadweaver Street Baths charge half-fees this time of the morning," he advised him. "I'd stop off there before you head home."

"Beadweaver Baths is full of whores this time of the morning," Elkins grouched, giving him the evil eye as he dragged himself away from the support of the reception desk.

"Yeah, never say I don't pass on the good tips." Dean turned to Jody. "How's the priest?"

"Still alive," she said, but her tone suggested this was a temporary thing. "They took him to the House of Healing on Fountain Square, but Dean – he's got to be eighty if he's a day. Chances are he won't even wake up."

"Great. And we have a whole street of merchants' warehouses with maybe one guard on each. What're our chances of finding someone who saw anything?"

"Them's the breaks," Jody said, not unsympathetically, but with the flat realism that any Watch officer developed over time.

Dean sighed. "Right. I'll be in my office, writing up my report. I'll head over the House of Healing later to see how he's doing."

"Did you get any sleep?" Jody asked him, her tone deceptively off-hand. She was some years older than Dean and Henryks, having come to the Watch from a stint in the Army, and occasionally Dean had the weird thought that she was how his own mother might have been at the same age had she lived that long. Jody knew him worryingly well, probably because she was friends with Ellen.

"I got enough," he said, brushing the question off as politely as he could.

She shook her head and hung up her clipboard on the wall behind the desk. "Your funeral, Captain. I'm out of here."

"Thanks, Jody." He watched her leave, then turned to Jo. "I'm not here," he warned her, "not unless the - "

"Not unless the District Commander, the Provost Marshal, the Queen or a senior member of one of the Circles calls," she said, rolling her eyes. "I _know_ , Dean."

"That's _Captain_ to you, Rookie!" Henryks barked, looming up behind her and making her jump.

Dean grinned and tipped a salute to the other man, before leaving them to it. There was a reason Jo was on Henryks's shift; as Ellen's daughter, she didn't always give Dean the respect his position merited. He didn't particularly care, as he preferred the people under him to speak their minds, but Jo's impudence would be seen as a serious lack of discipline by less imaginative people higher up, and Dean didn't want her to be shifted to a more distant Watch House as punishment for insubordination or, worse, kicked out. He'd promised Ellen he would keep an eye on her.

His office was a mess as usual, his desk and the area around it a graveyard for half-finished paperwork and reports. A second, smaller desk by the fireplace, also swamped in papers, had once accommodated the clerk who had kept the papers in order for him. Ash had been redeployed at the same time as the previous captain's departure, when a District budgeting exercise had decided that this particular Watch House could manage without clerical assistance. The argument had apparently been that the clerk had only been needed because of the captain's incompetence. Dean hoped the mess didn't indicate similar things about him.

Of course, once he was sitting at the desk, writing his report took second place to trying to sort through all the things he should have done the day before that had been put off because of the fire. And then he had to read through the notes of every constable in attendance on the fire, plus those of the constables who had had to deal with everything else in their colleagues' absence. Most of the notes were marked with soot, charcoal and ashes, and smelled of bitter smoke.

Fires … Dean loathed fires.

 

xXx

 

Some time later - probably several candlemarks later - there was a wary tap on the door and Jo poked her blonde head around the edge. Dean sighed and set down his reed pen.

"Guess the Queen must want me real bad. Well, she's only human."

Jo grimaced. "It's that _slob_ from the Water Street Guard," she hissed.

"So?" Dean eyed her interestedly. "Did you break his arm?" Said 'slob' had a known attitude problem around female rookies.

"You said I wasn't allowed," Jo grumbled. "He's here about the fire, and there's someone with him. A priest, I think. I thought you'd want to talk to him."

A priest? Eyebrows hitting his hairline, Dean got up. "Fine, I'm coming."

Jo tended to be fairly precise in her choice of epithets, he reflected as he followed her down the passage. She could have called the guardsman from Water Street a jackass or a pig, and no one would have argued the description, but in this case the word _slob_ summed it up like few other things could. The man was a disgrace to the uniform he spilled his meals over and which he was greasily spilling out of so copiously today. The lacings on his breeches just barely prevented a charge of public indecency, the sleeves were beginning to pull out of his tunic, it wasn't entirely clear how his belt stayed in place, and his boots probably hadn't been polished since they'd been issued. There was also an unpleasant odour emanating from him - stale sweat, stale beer, stale everything - which probably explained why the man with him was keeping as great a distance between them as he could within the cramped reception area.

"Guardsman Pyote," Dean said, eyeing him with disgust. "It's safe to stand up straight - I had the reception desk reinforced."

"Eh?" the man grunted, not moving from where he was slumped. He focussed one loose red eye upon Dean with an expression that was just shy of open contempt, but he hadn't survived in the City Guard for this long without being wily enough to know just how far he could push his luck. Technically, the City Guard held precedence over the Watch – the Watch being 'civilian' as opposed to the Guard who were 'military' – and all too many officers in the Guard had an attitude problem where their beleaguered Watch colleagues were concerned. Nevertheless, it took a reckless guardsman indeed to be openly contemptuous to a Watch Captain's face, for protocol dictated that Dean held the same rank as a Guard Captain and thus had as much seniority over any lower-ranking Guardsman as he did over one of his own constables.

Dean debated with himself whether to spell out that the reception desk didn't need Pyote to prop it up, and decided it wasn't worth his time. Better just to get rid of him as fast as possible.

"Why are you here, Guardsman?" he demanded curtly, folding his arms.

"Cap'n told me to bring th'buck here," Pyote said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at the other man, and clearing his throat thickly.

"Spit on the floor and you'll clean it up," Dean warned him, before he could complete the action. Pyote gave him an assessing look that was at odds with his semi-intoxicated appearance and apparently decided not to test him.

"He's a _foreigner_ ," he continued, with a blithe indifference to said foreigner's presence. "Says he's from some foreign place in the south - Jer - Jer - "

"Jkatha," Dean supplied. "And it's pronounced _Icatha_." Admittedly, even most educated Valdemarans didn't know that, but he wasn't prepared to cut Pyote any slack.

"Like I said - foreigner," Pyote grunted, indifferent.

"That makes me a foreigner, then," Dean said, growing steadily more annoyed. This, as it happened, was true; his family had come from Jkatha two generations back. Just for the hell of it, he looked across to the stranger and switched to the language of his grandparents. "Let me get rid of this troll, friend, then we'll talk."

The stranger blinked and gave him a faint, surprised smile. "Thank you."

When he turned back to them, Dean found Jo giving him an impressed look and Pyote eyeing him suspiciously. Apparently, by virtue of being able to speak another language, in the Guardsman's eyes Dean was now a dangerous foreign spy. This would probably result in an amusing conversation with someone higher up at some point. As if to confirm this, Pyote demanded, "You _know_ this buck?"

Dean regarded him for a moment, before saying pointedly, "I really hope you have somewhere else you should be now, _Guardsman_."

Pyote gave him a filthy look, hitched up his breeches somewhat precariously with one hand, and slanted a truly appalling leer at Jo. "See ya after ya shift, Josefine!"

Jo turned scarlet with fury, but Dean was standing in front of her and he got in first. "If anyone from this Watch House sees you hanging around here without direct orders from your Captain, you'll be arrested, Pyote. And you'd better believe that you don't want to find yourself in one of _my_ cells."

Pyote snorted. "Right - _Captain_."

"And think about this," Dean added, more softly. "Maybe I don't care what your friends'll do to me if anything happens to you on my watch."

Pyote sneered at him and slouched out of the door without another word.

Jo's outrage spilled over the moment he was gone. "Why is he still a Guard! And how can you let him get away with talking to you like that?"

"For the same reason _you_ can get away with talking to me like that," Dean snapped back, and she subsided, flushing to the roots of her hair. Henryks must have delivered a memorable lecture earlier. "He has friends in high places. Yeah, I know, I find it hard to believe too, but people like him _always_ have friends. Learn to bite your tongue, Rookie."

He turned to the stranger, who was watching all of this with wide eyes. Now that Dean had the leisure to observe him, he saw that he was a lightly-built man an inch or two shorter than himself, with short, untidy dark hair and a square face. He had full lips, a stubborn chin and deep-set eyes of an unexpectedly fierce and brilliant blue. His clothing strongly suggested a uniform, travel-stained and worn though it was; an undyed linen shirt under a sleeveless tan vest and darker tan breeches, with black leather boots and belt. He was carrying his cloak and sheathed sword - he would have been ordered to remove the sword as soon as he entered the city - and a crossbow and quiver were slung across his back. Dean's eyes were caught by the badge stitched on the left breast of the man's vest, though; an odd, stylised design that looked vaguely familiar.

And for some reason, Dean found himself having to fight a grin. Whoever this man was, he didn't look like someone who should be wearing a uniform and carrying a sword or crossbow. He reminded Dean of a pikeman he'd once met who claimed to have signed the wrong form and ended up in the army instead of the palace kitchens (and most people had believed that story). Something about _this_ man's mild air suggested quills and parchment and old dusty texts; although that could be completely misleading, of course.

"So," Dean said to him amiably, "what can we do for you? Constable Harvelle says you're here about the temple fire?"

The man blinked and licked his lips nervously. "I – the _kommandante_ in the other place directed me here for information, but – temple fire? He said nothing of this …"

"Ah …" Damn. Dean rubbed the back of his neck, wishing that he'd had more sleep. Usually he managed to be more circumspect than that. "Tell you what, come through to my office and we can discuss this." He nodded a dismissal to Jo, who looked disappointed that she wasn't going to hear the full story first-hand. "I'm in a meeting if anyone asks for me, _Josefine_."

"Aye, Captain." As Dean led the stranger away, he heard her mumble irritably to herself, "My name is _not_ Josefine."

Dean waved the man into his office, then scooped a pile of paperwork off the clerk's chair and dragged it over in front of his desk. "I'm Captain Dean Winchester - have a seat."

"Thank you, _Kapitane_." The stranger set his weapons and cloak down neatly on a corner of the spare desk and settled cautiously into the elderly seat. "I am _Gar_ Castiel, sent from the High Temple of Bel in Throne City."

" _Gar_ , huh?" Dean knew the word – in Valdemaran it would translate to _brother_ , although it didn't mean a sibling. The term was an entirely spiritual one. "You're a monk then?"

"Yes, of a kind. You speak my tongue," the man said curiously, in Jkathan, "but with a strange accent. Where did you learn it?"

"From my grandparents. I wasn't lying to that Guard – my people came from Jkatha a way’s back." Dean returned firmly to Valdemaran. "Why are you here in Haven, _Gar_ Castiel? Who sent you?"

"My superiors sent me," _Gar_ Castiel replied. He had a deep, husky voice and a very direct, open way of speaking, and Dean found his focussed stare a little disconcerting. "They received a request from our brethren here, a letter – " He thrust a hand inside his tunic and drew out a much-handled letter which he passed across the desk to Dean.

Dean unfolded it and gave it a quick look before passing it back. "Sorry – I speak the language, but I can't read it. I was never taught. What did they want?"

_Gar_ Castiel took it back. "They requested the services of a _han'garuya_. That is my speciality." He saw Dean's expression. "Do you know what that means?"

Dean had tensed slightly. "I know a _garuya_ 's an evil spirit of some kind."

"A being born of the abyss – there are many. It is my business to seek them out where they cause harm in this world, and cast them back whence they have come."

Dean thought he could see where this was going and it added an extra fillip of joy to his day. "You're an exorcist, then. What the - why would those old men need an _exorcist_ of all people?"

"In their letter they say a young man approached them who described to them a _garuya_ of fire," _Gar_ Castiel explained, turning the letter over his in hands absently. "He feared its powers and said that it wished to possess him. It had made a number of threats. But the _Gar-gellim_ of the temple, the priests, they are old men and have no training in battling _garuyim_." He spread his hands. "Thus they requested the services of one such as I, and with all possible haste. A diplomatic courier carried me with him to the embassy in Rethwellan and from there I bought passage with a trader caravan to Valdemar."

"Wait wait wait … you said a _garuya_ of fire – a fire demon? Some kid in this city thinks a _fire demon_ is trying to _possess_ him?"

_Gar_ Castiel inclined his head. "Yes. He presented most convincing evidence to the priests."

For a moment Dean wasn't sure if he was going to laugh or throw up. A fire demon.

" _Gar_ Castiel … what do you know about Valdemar?" he asked, trying to keep his voice mild and calm.

"Only what everyone knows," the man admitted readily. "That the land is protected by the warriors with their white spirit-horses, and there is no magic practised here."

"Yeah, no magic – and no goblins, ghoulies or ghosties roaming around, especially not in the city. That includes _garuyim_ , you understand? If it's demons you're looking for, you gotta go to Karse."

For a moment they stared at each other, then _Gar_ Castiel broke into an unexpected smile. "Do you say that because you truly believe it, or because it is more comfortable for you to believe it?"

Dean blinked. "More _comfortable -_?"

"A lack of magic in Valdemar will not discourage a _garuya_ , _Kapitane_. They do not use magic. They have their own powers. That this young man believes in this creature – this _demon_ as you call it – will already have given it power over him, and it can only grow more powerful as he grows more afraid." _Gar_ Castiel suddenly tilted his head to one side, birdlike, regarding Dean curiously. "Why do you call it a demon?"

"Because that's what _garuya_ translates to in Valdemaran," Dean replied curtly, but he twitched in spite of himself.

"You say you do not believe there are such creatures in Valdemar, yet you used the word at once. If there are no demons in Valdemar, why would you think of it so readily?"

Dean stared at him for a moment – then, with a start, realised that his hands were gripping the arms of his chair fiercely. He forced himself to relax. "My father believed in demons," he said, when the silence had gone on just a little too long, "or so he said. Reckon he never found any that weren't at the end of his pipe or the bottom of a bottle, though."

Perhaps it was his tone of voice, but Castiel got the message and backed down. "I understand."

Dean really doubted that. His own family didn't understand, so some guy who had just blown in from a kingdom south of Rethwellan wasn't likely to have any special knowledge of the workings of Jon Winchester's mind.

"About this temple fire," he said, resolutely moving on. "The Temple of Bel on Stonepickers Row went up in flames last night – probably a deliberate job, though I don't know what they hoped to get out of it. Two of the priests died in the fire, I'm afraid. The third is in a critical condition at the nearest House of Healing, but seeing how old he is, we're not hoping for much. I'm sorry. I'm heading over there to see what shape the building's been left in and to check up on the priest. You're welcome to come with me if you want. I'm guessing you'll need to arrange the funeral rites for the dead anyway."

Castiel stared at him for a long moment. "A fire?"

"Yep. A bad one. Sheer luck it didn't spread to the neighbouring buildings."

"And you believe it to have been deliberately set?"

"It looks like it." Dean hesitated, then leaned forward a little. "Look, I've seen a lot of fires in this city and you get to know when it's an accident and when someone's helped it along. I've been in that temple a few times before and, yeah, I know Bel's a fire goddess and there were fire-pots all over the place - on the walls, hanging from the ceiling, you name it - and a fire-pit where the altar would be in just about any other temple, but …" Dean sighed. "These were experienced priests, they knew what they were doing and it was all safely contained. All but the Mother-flame gets extinguished properly at sundown and – "

"How often did you worship there, _Kapitane?_ " Castiel interrupted him.

"I didn't," Dean said shortly. "I'm not a religious man, Brother."

"And yet you know of the Rite of Twilight Falling and the preservation of our Mother's Holy Flame," Castiel noted. "Only a child of Her Temple would be taught such things." He smiled faintly at Dean's irritated look.

"Look, my family worshipped Bel when I was a kid, alright?" Dean said, his tone growing curt with aggravation. "I haven't been to a service since we came to Haven, though. Can we stick to the point?"

"Of course. Forgive me – it is not my wish to make you uncomfortable."

Dean took a firm grip on his temper, reminding himself that the man was a priest, or at least a monk, and nosy questions about other people's piety kind of came with the territory. "I'm sure the fire was set because of how quickly it took hold. There are things we look for – the colour of the flames, whether outer walls burn faster than the roof, that kind of thing. Witnesses said the flames were almost white in colour and the brickwork turned red. That's pretty unusual, in case you're wondering."

"I am a servant of Bel," Castiel said. "I am very familiar with fire, I assure you."

"Yeah, right," Dean muttered, losing all patience with the conversation. He stood up and Castiel was forced to do the same out of politeness. "I have a job to do, _Gar_ Castiel. I'm going over to the temple now, so if you want to join me and take a look, you'd better grab your stuff."

 

xXx

 

The weather hadn't improved, Dean noted dourly as they left the Watch House. He pulled his hood over his head, making sure the collar of his cloak was tucked inside (the hood was separate, to prevent the whole garment tangling him if someone grabbed the hood in a struggle) and tried not to wish for summer. The overbearing summer heat Haven had suffered in the past couple of years was arguably worse than this, although the constant dripping and inability to get anything properly dry was very lowering to the spirits. It tended to coop people up in buildings as well, which led to an increase in general violence as tempers frayed from the unavoidable proximity to others.

_Gar_ Castiel made a face at the light steady rain that greeted him on the doorstep. "This weather – this is usual for Valdemar?"

"In the spring, yeah." Dean glanced at him, taking in the shorter, lighter-weight cloak the monk wore. "If you're staying a while, you're going to need to get better wet-weather gear. A longer, oilcloth cloak at least." The other man grunted his agreement. "Where are you staying, anyway?"

"The Embassy has granted me board for five days. After that …" _Gar_ Castiel shrugged. "I had intended to seek lodging with my brethren at the temple."

"Yeah, that won't be happening."

"I shall manage."

Dean gave him a dubious look, but didn't argue with this calm statement. Hopefully five days would be enough to sort this business out and see the priest on his way back to Jkatha. Then he wondered what Castiel thought of Haven. Trying to look at the sodden, filthy streets as a stranger might depressed him. There were parts of Haven that were very elegant, very beautiful – the wealthier parts, inevitably – but this was not one of them, although Dean had seen far worse in his first posting at the Watch House by Exile's Gate. This sector of the city was known as the Strangers' Quarter, due to the number of tiny immigrant communities living there cheek-by-jowl in the cramped, multi-level buildings. The street Dean lived in was largely composed of families who originated from Jkatha, like his own forebears, and this was the area he led Castiel to now.

It was now late morning and in spite of the weather the streets were full of people going about their business; life couldn't stop for a little rain, after all. Dean and _Gar_ Castiel spent a large part of their journey stepping aside for other pedestrians or hastening out of the path of wagons, mules, horses and sedan-chairs. At one point a bedraggled wedding procession passed by, the bride carried precariously in a litter on the shoulders of two hired men and holding a light cloth canopy over herself to protect her veils and gown as best she could. Everyone else in her train was afoot and holding the hems of their skirts and cloaks up to avoid the muck of the street.

Dean had barely stepped back onto the walkway from the doorway he'd backed into when he heard the chime of bridle-bells accompanying hooves on the uneven cobbles, and he glanced around curiously. It was rare that Heralds were seen in the lower city, apart from those who sat in judgement in the Courts, and it was a little late in the morning for one of them to be abroad. But as the Companion drew abreast he saw the badges of a Special Messenger on the Herald's gear. She was wearing a voluminous riding cloak and judging by the saddlebags hitched to the rear of the saddle she was heading out on assignment. The Companion slowed to a walk beside Dean and the Herald pushed her hood back a little to reveal a familiar face.

"Heyla, Captain! A fine day to be walking the streets! What brings you out at this hour? I thought you were working the hours of darkness this moon."

"Herald Marisa!" Dean smirked up at her, aware of _Gar_ Castiel eyeing the Herald and Companion with fascination from a couple of feet away. The uniform always took strangers by surprise; there was white and then there was _White_ , and even the mud splattered up the Companion's legs couldn't detract from the extraordinary brightness of his white coat. "You stood me up! I'm hurt." He clapped a hand theatrically to his chest.

He and Marisa had had a brief fling a short while ago – very brief, for neither of them was the settling type, and in any case the Special Messengers had less room for fixed relationships than most Heralds. Which wasn't to say that it couldn't happen, of course, but it wasn't going to happen with Dean and he was quite happy about that. Nevertheless, he wouldn't have minded a repeat performance and they had even made a loose arrangement for it - very loose on her side, as it happened, but Dean didn't mind that either. He wasn't the kind to hold a grudge about these things, and it wasn't as though it couldn't as easily have been him standing Marisa up.

Marisa made a sad face, her eyes dancing with the mischief that had attracted him to her in the first place. "Oh! Duty called, you know. How shall I make it up to you?"

Dean chuckled. "That's up to you, sweetheart! You know where to find me. Now, speaking of duty calling …" He took a step back.

"Oh aye. I should be back in Haven in a week or so. Don't damage any limbs or other vital parts while I'm gone, will you?"

"Likewise! Fair roads and clear skies to you, Herald."

She waved a cheerful farewell and urged her Companion on. Dean smiled and looked around for _Gar_ Castiel. The priest was standing unexpectedly close, making him twitch slightly.

"That was one of the legendary Heralds of Valdemar?" he asked.

"Yeah … uh, you don't have to stand on my toes, you know. I can hear you fine from six inches away."

"My apologies." Castiel took a step back. "You know this Herald well?"

"Well enough." Dean grinned in spite of himself.

Castiel was giving him a strange look. "I had heard them described as a holy order of a kind, vowed to their calling."

At this, Dean huffed a laugh. "Nooooo! Not if you're thinking they're monks or celibate, anyway. They're, um, specially chosen for the job – it's called Choosing, actually – but they're not a religious order. More like a specialist military unit, really, only they're not like soldiers at all. They've got more in common with the judiciary, if anything." He paused, considered this, and frowned. "That doesn't begin to cover it either."

_Gar_ Castiel's eyebrows went up. "Should it concern me that you are unable to describe their function?"

"They don't have one fixed role," Dean said. "They do whatever the Queen needs them to do. They can be judges, diplomats, soldiers, messengers … and they answer only to the Queen and the Heraldic Circle. Which is pretty much the same thing, since the Queen is a Herald too."

"Powerful people," _Gar_ Castiel commented neutrally.

"Not in the ways you might think." Dean gave up on trying to explain it. He suspected you had to grow up with the concept of Heralds to really have any idea of what they meant. "The Temple of Bel is a couple of streets over," he said, changing the subject. "This part of my sector has a lot of people from the old country, but to be honest most of them are third and fourth generation, if not more – some'll introduce you to their grandpa or old auntie who remembers coming to Valdemar packed in a basket on the back of a donkey, but most of them call themselves Valdemaran. Not many of them worshipped at the temple," he added, almost apologetically.

_Gar_ Castiel's expression didn't change. "No doubt they have converted to local religions."

"If they were ever Bel-worshippers in the first place. There's another temple on the corner of Fountain Square, to Sert, the Lord of Air. It gets more traffic, but that's probably because it's in a better location. The Temple of Bel is – was – in the middle of the warehouse area. A lot of traders and merchants in this part of the city, they gotta have somewhere to store their goods. Here, we can take a shortcut through this alley … mind your feet."

The 'alley' in question was a gap between two buildings that was barely wider than Dean's shoulders and paved with some of the roughest cobbles in Haven. He could hear _Gar_ Castiel's wary footsteps even as he picked his own. But the shortcut saved them trailing around two more streets to get to the site of the fire – which was all the temple was now, a hollowed out shell of blackened brickwork, heaped with filthy debris inside and out.

Two constables from the Ropewalk Watch were minding the scene, preventing the locals from looting the wreckage until Dean had a chance to inspect the site. The people in this district weren't _quite_ as rapacious as they were down at Exile's Gate, but they were still very good at harvesting anything that could be of use from a calamity like this. In most cases, Dean would only have taken enough measures to ensure that no one could get hurt in the process, as there was little or no point in trying to actively prevent looting, especially as the owners would provide their own hirelings to protect any assets they wanted to retain. A temple, however, was deemed to be a 'Crown Concern', especially as the building and ground it stood upon was consecrated. Anything of importance left in the rubble would have to be removed and another priest – either _Gar_ Castiel, in this case, or someone appointed by the Lord Patriarch – would need to say what should be done with the site, if only because on a practical level it was too dangerous to let the common folk take from a temple site; some temples housed relics and artefacts that might not be harmless in the wrong hands.

This latter fact was in Dean's mind as he greeted the two constables, Olivia and Jed. "Everything quiet here?"

"As far as local people are concerned," Olivia said dryly. Older than Dean, she was another of Ellen's cronies, but he'd never had any trouble from her. Like a lot of women in the Watch, she'd developed a cynical sense of humour over the years, and not much fazed her.

"Pie-guts was here," Jed commented. He was older still, a Watch veteran with faded sandy hair and a phlegmatic manner.

"Pyote, huh? What did he want?" Dean asked.

"No idea. We had to run him off – he wanted to go pokin' round in there," Jed said, jerking a thumb at the ruined temple. His lips twisted a little. "Wouldn't want him to go hurtin' himself, now would we, Captain?"

"Not when I'm looking forward to doing the hurting," Olivia added blandly.

Dean smiled, inwardly praying that he never did anything to attract the ire of the female constables the way Pyote did. "You'll have to stand in line, Constable. If he turns up again, do what you have to to prevent him going inside - arrest him even. My orders." Olivia's eyebrows arched appreciatively at this. "The Guard have no jurisdiction here, even if this was his sector, and it isn't." Dean gestured to _Gar_ Castiel. "We're just going to take a look around."

"Stick to the walls, Captain," Olivia warned. "There's still debris dropping in the middle from what's left of the roof." She gave _Gar_ Castiel a curious look, but didn't ask who he was.

"I was hoping to avoid going inside," Dean commented to Castiel. "Contrary to anything my people'll tell you, I'm not reckless. Might not be able to tell where the fire started without going in, though."

The priest was peering cautiously through what had been the front entrance doors of the temple. What remained of the heavy wooden doors themselves was large hunks of charcoal on the front steps. "There is little enough left apart from fragments of the rafters," he remarked. "This was a smaller temple, I see – no inner walls or sanctuary. Where did the _Gar-gellim_ live?"

"There was a wooden annexe at the back of the building – two storeys. I doubt there's anything left of it now, since it was flaring like a volcano last night, but we can take a look. Mind how you walk there – the steps inside go down, three of them I think."

"Thank you," _Gar_ Castiel said absently. He trod with the negligent confidence of a cat, making Dean's progress seem clumsy by comparison. "I think we will not find a single site of ignition, _Kapitane_."

"Yeah, I've been wondering about that myself." Dean looked around the building, chewing his lower lip for a moment. "No pews in a Temple of Bel, just a couple of benches for the old and sick, and very few fittings at all, no hangings or arrases, so not much that'd burn. So how in all that's holy did they set a fire that burned it out completely? Even if they just fired the priests' quarters, the most it could have done was maybe damage part of the temple roof."

The priest didn't answer immediately. He crouched down by one wall and was running his fingers through some of the debris on the floor. Then he studied them for a several minutes, before standing up and coming to show his fingers to Dean in the light from the entrance.

"This is our answer, _Kapitane_ ," he said, holding up his hand.

His fingers were coated with some yellowish substance, streaked in places with soot.

Dean stared. "Wait, is that – is that _brimstone?_ "

"Yes," _Gar_ Castiel said simply. He didn't look remotely surprised. "I suspected we might find this here. The fire was set by the _garuya_ – it was here in this building and this is its mark. It can do many things to disguise itself, but it will always leave traces of sulphurous dust behind."

Dean was finding it hard to drag his eyes away from the yellow dust. "You're saying … a demon set the fire."

"Most likely the demon the _Gar-gellim_ wrote of. The coincidence is too great, and it would be like such a creature to take out its rage upon the ones who sought to thwart it." _Gar_ Castiel considered Dean's face for a moment, before saying carefully, "The _garuyim, Kapitane,_ are like people with all the better parts of their natures removed. They are … concentrated sin, perhaps you would say. They are uncontrolled impulses, unsatisfied greed and lust, irrational rage and hatred. This demon has an objective, the possession of a body to better aid in its search to fulfil its appetites. Its chosen vessel has resisted and, worse, sought help from others, and this is the demon's punishment for that." The priest looked around for a moment, studying the wreckage of the temple. "The young man must be very afraid."

"You think he'll try to tell someone else? Or contact you?"

"I doubt he knows I exist. And after this?" _Gar_ Castiel shook his head. "Would you speak to another soul, knowing that those you sought help from are dead because of it? No. He will either give in to the demon or – if he is strong of heart – he may try to find another solution. What that may be, I cannot say. One thing you may be sure of, _Kapitane_ , and that is that the _garuya_ will not stop now. Fire is its element; the setting of a fire of this size will have excited it, and if its target continues to resist it will strike again."

"Great," Dean muttered, thinking of the misery more fires would cause. Then it dawned on him that he had accepted there was a demon behind this stuff. He stiffened, glowering at the priest, but _Gar_ Castiel only smiled faintly. "You realise if I try to tell the District Commander that we've got a demon for an arsonist, he'll have me sedated by the nearest Healer?" he said, exasperated.

Actually, it would probably be worse than that. He doubted the District Commander had forgotten Jon Winchester's driving obsession.

"I sympathise, but a lack of belief will not prevent the _garuya_ 's actions."

"How are you going to stop this thing anyway, always supposing we can track it down?"

"There are a number of rituals that can be used – exorcising it will not be the challenge. The difficulty will be in locating and trapping it first." _Gar_ Castiel hesitated, then offered, "Perhaps if I spoke to your _Kommandante_ …"

"Oh, no no no. You are not going to go around talking about exorcising demons, pal. That's a fast ticket out of the kingdom with a label around your neck marked 'undesirable alien'." Dean drew a deep breath, trying to think of a solution. "Alright, how about this: you're not here officially as a priest. You're here for some other reason, and you just happen to be in the right place at the right time to help out the old priests who worked at this temple."

"But I am here as a priest," Castiel objected.

Dean rolled his eyes. "Oh, for - it's a cover story! Help me out here!"

_Gar_ Castiel gave him his disconcerting stare. "I have a brother," he ventured, at length. "Gabriel. He left home before I joined the Order – he was always adventurous and at odds with our father. He quarrelled with Father one day and left us; we sought him for many months, but the only news we had of him was a friend who said he joined a group of bards and mummers who were travelling north. The last heard of their troupe was here in Valdemar."

"So you've come here to find your brother – alright, that's good. We can work out the details on our way." Dean turned to the entrance.

"Where are we going?"

"We need to visit the House of Healing and find out how the third priest is doing. If he's able, you need to talk to him and find out as much as you can about this demon. Right? And then we need to make a stop at the Court on Weavers Corner and get authority from the Herald there for you to make whatever arrangements are necessary for the two dead priests and management of what's left of this temple."

"And then?"

"And then," Dean continued rather bitterly, as they stepped out onto the street, "I need to catch up with the Provost Marshal's men and ask them why the hell they haven't paid my people yet. If I'm really lucky they'll have issued the stipends already, and I can afford to pay off my landlady and maybe buy something to eat tonight before one of my little brothers needs money for something. Again."

 

xXx

 

The old priest was not going to make it; Dean had seen the signs of impending death often enough now to recognise them straight away. Oddly enough, he had suffered no burns and only minimal smoke inhalation. He owed his life to the fact that at seventy-nine a full bladder will not be ignored, even in the middle of the night; he had seen the fire on his way back from the outdoor privy and raised the alarm. What was going to kill him was stress and shock, the knowledge that the temple and his two most constant companions for the past forty years or more were all gone in the space of a single night and there had been nothing he could do to save them. He was deeply agitated and this was putting impossible strain on a very weak heart.

"We could give him something to calm him down," the Healer explained to Dean, as _Gar_ Castiel went to kneel by the old man's bedside and clasp his hands, "but with the state he's in, that could kill him just as easily. And we knew you'd want to talk to him. But when you're done, we'll give him a half-dose anyway. It may not be safe, but it's kinder than this."

Castiel was murmuring soothingly to the old man in Jkathan; the priest was trying weakly to tell him something, but his voice was thin and thready and Dean couldn't follow it. He wondered if knowing the exorcist had arrived would give the priest any kind of comfort. More importantly, he wondered what the old man had seen. The fire had to have taken hold impossibly fast for it to have all but incinerated the priests' dwelling in the space of time it had taken for one man to visit the privy. Dean was uncomfortably aware that the evidence was stacking up in favour of Castiel's demon story.

_Demons_. Ye gods. Dean resolutely turned his mind away from the numerous memories of his father ranting about yellow-eyed demons. He wasn't his father and he wasn't believing in this because of some crazy obsession. The evidence was what it was and he would follow it wherever it took him, keeping his mind open at the same time for every angle and possible explanation. At the moment, the evidence suggested demons, but as he investigated more evidence might be uncovered which revealed something different. Following evidence with an open mind was his job.

Then _Gar_ Castiel got to his feet, still holding the old priest's hands, and looked across to the Healer. She picked up a small cup from a side table and went at once to administer the dose. Castiel stayed with the old man, stroking his hands gently, until he relaxed into a doze.

"What did he tell you?" Dean asked, when Castiel finally joined him by the door.

"That it was the demon that set the fire, as we suspected. But he was very upset and confused – I had hoped to get the name of the victim, but he was unable to tell me."

"Oh well," Dean said, resigned. He was too accustomed to this sort of thing to be upset about it.

"He did manage to tell me the demon's name, however – Az." Castiel shot him a quick look. "That will not be its true name, of course, or if it is then it will not be the whole of it. But it will be of use should we manage to trap it and I can use it to force it to tell me its true name."

"Well … that's good, I guess." Dean led him out into the street again. "Alright, let's head over to Weavers Corner. If we hurry we should be able to catch the Herald before she opens the afternoon session of the court. I don't want to get put on the end of the docket, we'll be stuck there all day."

 

xXx

 

Castiel watched with interest as the Watch Captain explained the situation with swift efficiency to the Herald before them. The captain had named her to him as Herald Asrel and she was a short, stocky woman with curly grey hair who was, if he had to guess, around fifty years old. She didn't look to Castiel to be someone who missed much or who suffered fools gladly, but there was a spark of good humour in her eyes as Dean glibly rattled off his story and he rather thought she had the younger man's measure.

Curious, he reached out mentally, trying to get a feel for the kind of person this Herald was. There was little beyond the blinding white uniform to link her to the other Herald they had encountered earlier, and he would have liked to learn something more of the nature of these 'chosen' ones. But he came up against a solid set of mental shields at once, and hastily backed off. Castiel wasn't entirely surprised; people in positions of authority often developed such shields, whether they were Mindspeakers or not, but the crispness of them told him that the Herald's shields were probably the result of excellent training. That was something to consider further at his leisure.

In due course she turned her attention to him, her eyes raking over him and, he was sure, missing nothing at all. "You are _Gar_ Castiel? Are you comfortable speaking Valdemaran?"

Castiel thought it prudent to bow to her. "I am, Honoured One."

"'Herald' will be sufficient," she replied dryly. "It's fortunate you happened to arrive here in Haven when you did, it seems."

"Unfortunate, perhaps, that I did not arrive earlier," he replied.

Herald Asrel nodded crisply. "True. Not that there was much you could have done. This is a bad business but I can assure you – and I hope you'll convey this to your superiors – that we will do everything we can to apprehend the culprit. Captain Winchester has my confidence and full support in this matter."

And that, Castiel realised, was genuinely meant. There was nothing in her tone or manner to suggest any reservations about the Watch Captain at all.

"In the meantime," the Herald continued briskly, "are you are willing to take responsibility for the appropriate rites being carried out for the deceased and ensure that their remains are disposed of decently, in accordance with the law? Your temple, presumably, will stand as guarantor for any necessary expenses."

"Herald, I will ensure all will be cared for as it should," Castiel said.

"Very well. The bodies will be released to you when you present the Healers with my order. With respect to the temple remains, Captain Winchester will ensure that you're made known to the appropriate local officials, but I'll write to the Sector's Proctor myself to order the building's emergency demolition. In the interests of public safety it should be done as quickly as possible, so I suggest you perform any necessary rites of de-consecration within the next full day. The Proctor will also know who owns the title of the land – make sure the land is within the ownership of your Order before you make any attempt to dispose of it. Is that clear?"

"I understand."

"Good." She let out a breath and turned to a young woman standing a few feet away, who wore a uniform of shaded blue and carried a wax tablet that she was making rapid notes upon with a stylus. "Write all that up for me, please, Jaheen. Come back at the end of the afternoon, gentlemen, and I'll have the orders ready for you. Is that everything, Captain?"

"Yes – thanks, Herald," the Captain said.

"All in a day's work," she said dryly. "One thing, while you're here – I didn't see the case of the Lavayuri boy on the docket. Weren't you supposed to be asking the Crown to accept a bond on him today?"

"I was, but one of my people came in last night with a possible lead on his brother," Dean explained. "If I can find him and get him to take the boy in …"

Asrel gave him a stern look. "You have a week, Captain. I know you want to avoid bonding him, but the child's at risk on his own. Which long-suffering laundress have you planted him with this time?"

Castiel watched with interest as Dean ducked his head, looking rueful. "It's only for a day or two. She doesn't really mind."

"Very well, but mind what I said – a _week_. No more." More kindly, she added, "You can't rescue them all, Dean, no matter how hard you try. Trust me, I know."

"What did she mean?" Castiel asked, as they set off once more.

"Oh, you know … lotta kids in this Sector with only one parent. Parent dies …" Dean shrugged. "I don't like seeing them bonded to someone who's only interested in seeing how hard they can work, and there's a lot of that sort of people in the world."

"Surely that is not your responsibility?"

"It ends up being my responsibility if the kid turns up on the streets, stealing stuff or worse," the captain retorted. "Besides, isn't it everyone's responsibility? You're a priest – don't you think the kids ought to be everyone's responsibility?"

"That is the ideal," Castiel agreed. "It is rare in practice, though."

He was fascinated by this insight into the younger man, and as they walked through the streets he only became more so. The return trip to the Watch House was not the straightforward journey they had taken on their way to the temple. People accosted Dean every few minutes, most simply to greet him amiably and pass the time of day – evidently he was very well known in this area – but others demanding news of the temple fire and other matters that the Watch Captain was presumably in charge of, and still more wishing to register complaints or ask advice about matters of importance to them. In one place he directly intervened to break up a fight between two teenaged apprentices, knocking their heads together and sending them, and their crowd of excited observers, on their separate ways with a gruff admonition to do something more constructive with their time, like the work they were hired to do. In another he settled an acrimonious dispute between two women over the dumping of foul waste in a gutter, and this involved quoting of the law, chapter and verse, as it related to the disposal of sewage, followed by a warning to both women that he would be back to visit them if any of his constables passed this way and reported seeing human waste in the street.

Even those people who didn't actively delay his passage had things to say to the young Captain. A surprising number heckled him genially for being seen out during the day when he should be working the evening shift, and more than one young woman made astonishingly saucy personal remarks, which Dean brushed off with smiling good-humour and the occasional equally saucy retort. He was a very handsome man; whether he took advantage of that Castiel couldn't tell, but judging by the banter with the girls in the street he would guess not. That was something of a surprise, considering the decided sexual overtones to the brief conversation the captain had had with the first Herald in the street.

As they walked along Dean kept up a steady stream of amiable commentary, mostly centred around the people they encountered in the streets and the odd buildings, businesses and alleyways they passed. Castiel wasn't a fool; he knew this was a clever cover the captain employed to avoid discussion of deeper topics. What he wondered was if Dean recognised this fact himself. Castiel had no intention of discussing the _garuya_ in public, and he doubted Dean expected him to. This conversational avoidance was a habit on the younger man's part, something so automatic that he didn't need to think about doing it.

Mentally, he was more interesting. Castiel had given him the same mental 'nudge' he'd employed with Herald Asrel to so little effect. With Dean the result was different. He had mental shields, yes, the deeper, more shifting kind that came with being someone in a position of considerable responsibility. But he also had 'surface' thoughts and emotions drifting in front of those shields, a superficial skin of everyday ruminations over his mind, and Castiel hadn't expected that. It suggested that Dean might have a weak, unidentified Mindspeaking Gift.

That possibility explained a lot to Castiel. How Dean had managed to retain not only the Jkathan language of his grandparents with such accuracy but also their distinctive East Border accent and dialect, even though he had been surrounded by non-speakers from childhood. And how such a young man - Castiel doubted he was more than twenty-five years old - came to be in a position of authority and responsibility over many older and more experienced colleagues. He was probably using his Gift to reach out to and assess every person he encountered, and most likely he didn't even know he was doing it.

The weather continued to be utterly miserable, a constant fine rain that was heavier than drizzle but not quite heavy enough to be called proper rainfall. It soaked through clothing with a thoroughness that even a very heavy storm would be hard put to better, and before long Castiel was wishing desperately for the oilcloth cloak Dean had mentioned when they set out that morning.

So perhaps he shouldn't have been surprised when Dean suddenly took a turning into a wide thoroughfare that was cluttered with covered stalls, wagons and shoppers, and pulled him along the length of the area until they came to a stall piled high with second-hand clothing. The captain abandoned Castiel under a corner of the canvas awning that protected the numerous customers from the rain and elbowed his way to a flimsily-contrived rack of hanging garments. When he returned he was carrying an armful of calf-length cloaks, all of them in drab colours but with the faint sheen on the cloth that showed they had been treated to protect against inclement conditions.

"Here, try these on," Dean told him. "One of them should fit. You can't keep wearing that cape, you'll catch lung-rot or something."

Castiel fumbled the clasp of his cape undone and shrugged out of it. "I have money ..."

"Good, because I haven't been paid this week," Dean joked. "That's too tight around the shoulders - try this one."

They found a cloak of a suitable fit; while it wasn't new, it was in reasonably good condition and Castiel certainly wasn't going to quibble about a couple of neatly-mended seams. Dean attracted the attention of the stallholder and proceeded to barter with her briskly for the cloak. A handclasp and three silver coins later, and they were back on the street again, with Castiel at least in a much better frame of mind.

Dean dragged him over to the covered cart of a man selling hot drinks and pies next, and took what was obviously the last two copper coins from his pouch to buy them each a small cup of hot tea with honey - gillyflower tea, to judge by the slightly acid aftertaste.

"Drink it," Dean said firmly, when Castiel would have protested. "You got soaked, so get something hot inside you. Besides, if I don't have this stuff now, I'll fall asleep under my desk later. Looks like I'm working a double shift today."

"Then you should at least eat something," Castiel retorted, and against Dean's own protests he bought them each a warm sausage-stuffed bun from the vendor.

His father would be horrified, he thought idly as they consumed this princely meal standing in the humble street under a meagre canvas awning, while the rain continued to fall dismally onto filthy cobbles and scruffy urchins shouted incredibly crude insults at the Watch Captain from a distance. Eating cheap food in the street was the among the lowest of common behaviours to someone of his family's rank, on a par with getting drunk in seedy taverns and vomiting the result into the gutters.

Castiel found that he didn't care. He would far rather stand here, eating a sausage bun with the pleasant young captain, watching the seething bustle of real life around him, filthy, loud and crude though it might be, than dine on roast venison in the finest houses of Throne City with their superficial and uncaring denizens.

 

xXx

 

"So, have we been paid?" Dean demanded when they arrived back at the Ropewalk Watch House.

"You just missed them," Jo reported. "Henryks took charge of the strongbox."

"Great. I can pay your mom what I owe her."

"Ha! She'll probably pass out from the shock." Jo held out a clipboard. "I left your messages in your office. This is the visitor list. We've got old Simke in lock-up again - he was exposing himself to the Sisters of Chastity in Lock-And-Key Row. Maude the Washer dropped by to say the Lavayuri kid did a bunk this morning, but she thinks she knows where he's gone this time. Luckily Henryks got a note from his brother just after you went out, so he's gone to see if he can talk him into taking the kid in, then he's heading over to Maude's to track him down."

"Good, because Herald Asrel's going to put a bond on him by the end of the week if we can't sort something out," Dean said. He scanned the list of callers. "Widow Keffrey's been in again - was it cats, laundry or loud parties this time?"

"She said there's a man on the third floor who cooks stuff on a brazier with the windows open."

"Dangerous to light a brazier in the room _without_ opening the windows," Dean commented. "That's why it's against ordinances to cook in those buildings."

"Yeah, well she says he throws his scraps onto her laundry when he's finished eating."

"Can't say I blame him, she's a pain in the ass. Why hasn't she taken it up with the landlord? Oh wait - probably because he's threatened to evict her if she keeps making trouble."

"You'd think he'd have done it by now," Jo said.

"He knows she has money," Dean told her. "She only lives in that ratty block because she's an incredible miser."

"And if she moved anywhere else, she might not have anything to complain about?"

"You're learning, Rookie." Dean's eyes found the final visitor on the list. "You had a runner in here from the Fountain Court Healers?"

"That one's on the top of your message pile," Jo said almost apologetically, and her eyes flicked to Gar Castiel - politely reading the City Ordinances pinned on the far wall - for a second.

"Right," Dean said glumly. "Did anyone talk to Widow Keffrey? Because I have bigger things on my plate than her neighbours tossing half-chewed pork ribs into her bloomers."

"Fraya said she'd take a look when she passed that way."

"Good. In that case, I'm in my office for now. Come on through, Cas."

"He shortens everyone's name," Jo explained to the confused Castiel.

The paperwork in Dean's office hadn't grown any less in his absence. He made a futile attempt to tidy it a little and was surprised when Castiel gravely set about helping him. Between them they at least managed to neaten the piles somewhat and unearth both chairs completely.

"It is plain that yours is no office job," Castiel commented. "Should someone not assist you with your papers, so that you may do your work more efficiently?"

"You'd think," Dean grumbled. "We had a clerk, but they took him away when I got made captain. They said I didn't need him and there's more important work he could be doing at headquarters."

"I see." From the look on his face, the priest really did.

"Let me just check my messages a second ..." But Dean only grabbed the top ones.

The first was the message from the Healers about the elderly priest; he'd passed away not long after Dean and Castiel left him. Dean wasn't surprised, but it was depressing nevertheless. The second message - with a folded packet of documents pinned to it - was from Herald Asrel. She gave authority for Castiel to make arrangements for the dead priests and the remains of the burned out temple, and included a formal Heraldic Order that gave Dean authority to make whatever enquiries necessary in order to apprehend the culprit or culprits. The final paper in the packet was a copy of an order of works sent to the Proctor of the Strangers Quarter, compelling the demolition of the Temple of Bel as soon as Castiel had de-consecrated it.

He conveyed all this to Castiel, finishing with, "The first thing you need to do is arrange the priests' funerals. You cremate the dead, don't you?" Castiel nodded. "Right - there's a crematorium outside the city walls. I can introduce you to an undertaker who can make the arrangements for you. I guess you'll need to hold some kind of funeral, right?"

"It will not be elaborate," Castiel said, "but if there were any worshippers who used the temple - the priests should be brought through the area so that Bel's followers may pay their respects." His face was calm as he said this, but Dean noticed the slight, restless movement of one hand against his thigh, a tapping motion that betrayed inner agitation. "There will perhaps not be many but - "

"Cas," Dean interrupted kindly, "everyone knows the priests died in the fire. Trust me, when they know about the funeral all the people who live nearby will be there, even if they never went into that temple in their lives. People in this sector are like that."

Castiel's eyes flicked away for a second, then returned to his face. "I see. Thank you."

"You need to de-consecrate the temple too. How does that work?"

"It is a simple matter. At sundown I will light a sacred fire in a vessel within the temple remains and give thanks to Bel for the temple and priests. Then the vessel is brought out of the temple and the fire extinguished."

"Just like that? Huh." Dean rubbed his chin thoughtfully, then lowered his voice a little. "What about this demon? Is it likely to come back?"

"No," Castiel said, after a moment's hesitation. "As a rule they are not clever, the lesser _garuyim_ , but they are cunning. I think it will not want to attract too much attention to itself. It has made its point. It will now allow its victim time."

He didn't clarify what that time was for, but Dean could guess. Time for the fear to build. Time to try to think of a way to escape. Time to despair.

"Isn't there anything we can do to track this thing down?" he demanded, slapping a hand on the arm of his chair in frustration.

Castiel blinked. "Of course, _Kapitane_. I know more about it now than I did when I first arrived in your city. I have part of its name and an understanding of what it is capable of, and I know that it is not one of the greater fire _garuyim_ – "

"Can you summon it?" Dean interrupted.

Castiel sucked in a sharp breath. " _Kapitane_ , I – no, I cannot, for I am not a mage. And I would not even if I could. Only a very foolish person deliberately summons such a creature – "

"Somebody must have! It's not like they can cross over into our world without help!"

"Indeed, and that too is a consideration. If, as you say, no one in Valdemar practises magic, then it must have been summoned by someone outside of the kingdom and come here later."

Dean muttered something savagely uncomplimentary about the Karsite priesthood under his breath.

"That is a possibility," Castiel acknowledged dryly, "but it is also possible that the creature was summoned some time ago – possibly even generations ago – and is still here because it was never dismissed or banished back to the Abyss. Sometimes they will follow a particular strain of magical power or a bloodline and prey upon the weakest individuals in that line."

"Great." Dean wiped his face with one hand, feeling ridiculously tired all of a sudden. "So what you're telling me is that the possibilities are endless. There's only one of you, Cas, and only one of me."

"Despair is premature," Castiel told him. "I brought books with me which will aid me in identifying the specific type of _garuya_ we are dealing with. And there are other matters to be dealt with." He got to his feet. "I have three funerals and a de-consecration of a temple to arrange, _Kapitane_ , and under the circumstances I will be obliged to give some manner of explanation to my Ambassador if I am to remain under his roof unquestioned. I should begin this work if the de-consecration rite is to be held at sundown."

"Yeah, alright." Dean put aside his tiredness and stood up too. "I'll get someone to take you to the undertaker – his name's Crowley. Try not to take offence at anything he says, alright? He's good at what he does, but I think working with the dead every day has given him a weird sense of humour."

 

xXx

 

Castiel had said the de-consecration ceremony would be brief and simple, and that no one but himself needed to be there, but under the circumstances Dean attended and so too, in the event, did a surprising number of local residents.

Dean's motive was simple; whether he himself believed in the demon story or not (and the jury was still out on that one), he still had to _act_ as though the arsonist had been human. And that meant a discreet Watch presence at the ceremony, because if he knew anything about human nature then someone who got their kicks from setting fires would be intrigued by this unusual sequel to the conflagration they had initiated at the temple.

And it didn't take much circulating through the crowd to discover that the fire had stirred up a lot of bad feeling among the locals. If it _had_ been a human culprit, then Dean wouldn't wager much on their continuing safety - or, if he knew his Sector, the continuing safety of their family as well. These people might be Valdemarans now but their ancestors had been his own ancestors, people from certain communities in Jkatha with their traditional ways of dealing with these things. The rule was _root and branch_ \- you got rid of the malefactor and you got rid of their kindred as well, just in case. It stirred uncomfortable memories in Dean of the abrupt expulsion of a family from his grandparents' village when he was a child, the judgement handed down by the village elders followed by the silent, hostile vigil of the entire community outside their house until they packed up and left.

That wouldn't be how it was dealt with here. For the sake of the family Dean hoped his constables found any human arsonist first. At least then they could arrange to move the family in question to a safe area in another sector, before their neighbours could take punitive measures.

The crowd that gathered here now was calm and respectful, though. They might not have been regular or even irregular attendees at the temple, but they would have known the elderly priests and taken care of them in their own way, just as the old men would not have turned away anyone coming to their door - even if it had, in this case, led to their own deaths. There was also a scattering of religious orders - Dean saw two men clad in the dusty blue robes of the priesthood of Sert, Lord of Air (the other prominent Jkathan temple in this sector) and a tiny knot of homespun-clad nuns from the Order of Chastity a few streets away. A more grand black-and-gold robe was probably a representative from the Lord Patriarch's office. No glaring White, though, which Dean was grateful for. If a guilty party was hiding in the crowd, nothing would be more certain to scare them off than the presence of a Herald.

Castiel was standing in front of the burned out temple doors, doing something to a medium-sized brass cauldron as he waited for the sun to drop to the edge of the city roofscape. On a day like today the light was going fast. Eventually he straightened up and inserted a long metal bar through the loop that gathered the three chains fastened to the rim of the cauldron, and he used this to lift the cauldron and carry it into the temple. From where he was standing, Dean could just see that he took it to the edge of the fire pit that served as an 'altar' in Bel's temples and suspended it from a couple of jerry-rigged tripods.

"Heyla," a quiet voice said at Dean's elbow suddenly, and he turned in surprise to see his brother Sam standing there.

"Heyla yourself, Moose. What are you doing here?"

Sam's eyes were roving over the temple, wide with shock at the catastrophic damage. "Word spreads," he said after a moment. "Someone really did a number on this place, huh?"

"You could say that," Dean agreed. "Killed all three priests."

"Damn. They were old men - who would do something like that?"

"Someone I need to find fast."

Light flared inside the ruin, illuminating Castiel's grave face as he set the sacred woods, oils and incense in the cauldron alight. His deep, gravelly voice was clear and unexpectedly moving as he began the invocation to Bel that initiated the Rite of Twilight Falling. This evening there would be no preservation of the Mother Flame to close the ceremony however. Glancing around, Dean saw a number of people in the crowd - most of them very old - repeating the words of the service softly. They would be the tiny handful of congregants from the temple.

It was a very short service. Castiel spoke the words of the ancient ritual and called out the names of the three priests, commending the day's dead to the goddess's care, then closed the Rite by lifting the cauldron on the metal bar and carefully carrying it, still burning, out of the temple. He set it down very gently on the cobbles of the street and turned to face the temple. The words that followed were in Jkathan, but Dean followed them easily enough. _Thank you for the blessing of this house, Mother. Forgive the unholy one for its destruction. Forgive the murder of your priests. Know that although darkness falls forever here tonight, your flame still burns in our hearts and will forever more._

The standard closing words of the Rite were: _Let your holy flame guide us through the night_.

Castiel did not say them. He stooped to pick up the lid and fitted it tightly over the cauldron, effectively smothering the fire. Then he straightened again and bowed to the temple.

"It is done," he said. "Let the flame go out."

The silence that followed this was profound. A full minute ticked past, then Castiel turned to face the crowd.

"My brothers and sisters, the _Gar-gellim_ of this place would have been most touched by your kind regard for them tonight," he said. "They go to the goddess tomorrow evening and will pass through these streets should you wish to pay your respects. But for myself and on behalf of all who worship Bel, I thank you for your kindness in being here tonight."

Dean sensed more than heard the satisfied ripple that went through the crowd at this. Castiel had struck the right note with them.

"I will be here for a little while if anyone wishes to speak to me," Castiel concluded, and no sooner had he stepped away from the faintly smoking cauldron than a very old man indeed was helped up to him by a young girl.

"He's good," Sam commented. "Who is he?"

" _Gar_ Castiel," Dean said. "A Bel priest from Throne City."

"Seriously? Why is he here? Did the priests send for him?"

Mindful of Castiel's cover story, Dean shook his head. "Pure coincidence, Sammy. He's here on family business - looking for his brother. Just his bad luck that the day he arrives in Haven is the day the temple gets toasted."

"Oh." Sam stared up at the blackened frontage of the building for a moment. "Some coincidence! You'd think they would have sent someone to help those priests when they were so old and had no one to take over here."

Dean stared at him, surprised at the tone of this. "What do you care? You never worshipped here."

"Yeah, I did! A few times." Sam looked faintly uncomfortable. "Bel was our goddess, remember?"

"Yeah, _I_ do, but why would you? Dad never took you or Adam anywhere near the temple at Dell's Crossing! I only went there because Grandpa and Grandma took me."

Sam blinked. "I thought they took us too," he said, looking confused.

"Yeah, no." It was on the tip of Dean's tongue to add: _They took me because I lived with them. And they never took Adam because he wasn't their grandchild_. But years of ingrained habit, of trying not to bad-mouth their father to his brothers, made him bite off the words. What was the point? It wasn't Sam's fault anyway. But it did surprise him to discover that his brother even remembered the Bel temple at Dell's Crossing, let alone that he had worshipped _here_ more than once.

"Never mind that," he said, forcing the sharp edge out of his voice. "How are you doing? I haven't seen you for, what, three weeks?" He squinted at Sam. "You eating properly? You're looking peaky."

"Give it a rest, Mom! I'm fine." Sam gave him a faint grin. "Studying hard, before you ask. And I've been doing some intern work with one of the city judges - unpaid, of course, but it's experience and it gets me noticed."

"I'll leave out the 'unpaid' part next time Ellen asks me what you're doing," Dean said dryly. "You alright for money?"

"Yes, I get a bursary, remember? Stop worrying about me - Adam's a big enough drag on your purse."

"Yeah, if you see him remind him that he owes me for his laundry. Next time he doesn't pay, I'm going to let Ellen impound his underwear until he pays up. What the hell does he spend all his bursary on anyway?"

"Maybe we need to check up on that sometime soon," Sam suggested. His eyes were following Castiel as he made slow progress through the line of people wanting to speak to him. Most of them were very old and a few were visibly distressed.

"That'll be something to look forward to on my day off." Dean sighed, seeing one of his constables approaching. "Sammy, I gotta job to do - "

Sam waved him off. "Yeah, I know. I'll see you soon."

"Grab a meal with me sometime," Dean told him. "I switch to the day shift next week. Bring Adam too, if you have to drag him by his collar, kicking and screaming."

"Alright. Go on, go make the city safer."

Some hope of that, Dean thought, but he turned to receive Constable Abel's report. As it happened, Abel was pleased to report that while there was no one spotted in the crowd with a flint and tinder and a maniacal grin, he and his partner had apprehended a man wanted for a particularly nasty rape. So the evening here certainly hadn't been a waste of time, even if it meant Dean now had to return to the Watch House to spend the next few hours writing a report to the magistrates.

For a moment, when he glanced over at Castiel as he was leaving, Dean thought he saw Sam's tall, shaggy-headed figure slouching on the edge of the group of people clustered around the priest. But when he looked again he concluded he must have imagined it, for there was no sign of his brother.

 

xXx

 

Dean didn't see _Gar_ Castiel again until the following evening. After spending the rest of his shift writing up the report on the rapist, he dismissed his constables, handed over to Jody and went home, taking only the time to consume a cheap bowl of noodles from a caupona on the street and then pay off Ellen before falling face down onto his bed.

Some hours later he was woken by his cat, Baby, demanding to let out of the room so that she could go and plead with Ellen for food in return for her services as a mouser. Dean was relieved to see that he hadn't slept late, in spite of his double shift the day before. That left him time to take his own advice to Chief Elkins the previous morning and visit the Beadweaver Street Baths for a change, instead of paying Ellen for a dunking in one of her laundry tubs. (Yes, the Baths were indeed full of prostitutes at that hour of the day, but that was preferable to the wrestlers, carters and road workers who turned up later on. For one thing, the prostitutes were a lot cleaner.)

When he returned to his lodgings Ellen was just taking delivery of a large tray of fresh bread from a bakery at the other end of the street. Laundry was only a sideline for Ellen, and mostly conducted for the benefit of people like Dean who lived in rented rooms along Hemp Alley; her primary business was a tavern that faced out onto the main thoroughfare. Originally owned jointly with her late husband, the tavern had at one time been called Harvelles. After Bill Harvelle's death, however, his estranged relatives had promptly attempted to seize his assets from his widow and a lively battle had ensued that had ended with a Herald's judgement and Ellen in sole possession of not only the lucrative tavern but also the small set of rental apartments over it and a neat little laundry at the rear. The Harvelle family had exited stage left, muttering dire predictions that no one would do business with a lone woman, and Ellen had set about proving them wrong.

The Herald's only stipulation in his judgement had been that the name of the business should be changed, out of fairness to the family, and since everyone locally had been calling the tavern the "road-house" for years on account of it facing out onto the road (people were not very imaginative about these things, as Dean had often noticed), it became the Roadhouse Inn. It wasn't a high class establishment by anyone's measure - it wouldn't have lasted a month in this district if it was - but it was clean and friendly, and the fare was plain but of good quality. Ellen now had two local women, both widows, who helped with the cooking, cleaning and serving, and a third, a strapping girl with a club foot, helped with the laundry and occasional cleaning of the lodgings.

When Dean moved in at Ellen's, he had his younger brothers with him, who were both still at school at that point. He still rented the small suite of rooms in anticipation of those occasions when one or both of them decided to stay with him for a while; the only other lodger currently living at Ellen's was Ash, a scribe and book-keeper who had worked at the Ropewalk Watch House until the District Commander decided he could be more useful elsewhere. The third resident, of course, was Ellen's daughter Jo. She was possessed of a mild spirit of adventure which had led her to reject the usual custom of learning the parental business, and Ellen (to some local disapproval) had allowed this, which had led to Jo joining the Watch six months previously.

Dean credited Ellen with more farsightedness than her neighbours did. There had been an unspoken agreement between them when Ellen had tasked him to keep an eye on her daughter: better to let Jo get it out of her system, when opposition would only lead to her enlisting with the Guard or worse. They both believed that, barring any disasters, a time would come when she would be ready to put off her uniform again and take up managing the Roadhouse; a far more reliable profession for one's later years than chasing roofwalkers and pickpockets. Only oddities like Jed and old Rufus stayed with the Watch into old age.

As for Dean, he had no idea where he would end up, but minding a bar seemed like a pretty reasonable way to spend his retirement. He deliberately didn't make plans for the future, though. The vague idea of running a bar was just that - a vague idea, with no substance behind it. Had he allowed himself to think deeply about this, Dean would have come to the conclusion that he didn't really expect to make old bones. But he generally preferred to save profound thought for more important things.

When Dean arrived outside the alley door he could hear Ellen haggling with the baker, which surprised him because her usual order was a pre-negotiated deal. Then he saw that the breads in the tray were not her standard fare and strolled over to look. The scent of spices and glacé fruit met his nose and he saw the shape of the rolls - crude grinning skulls, frosted with sugar and the eye sockets picked out with currants. Funeral Bread.

"Someone die?" he asked, surprised.

"You should know," Ellen retorted. "Your pal the priest is cremating them tonight."

"Oh - "

"Some of the elderlies have asked for a wake," she added, more mildly. "I don't mind, it's good for business, and the bearers can rest the biers here while we say a toast for the dead. I've got Anaelia making _michlok_ the way it should be."

Dean had no particular liking for the spiced milk-and-wine drink that was traditionally served hot at funerals and wakes, but he reached into his pouch, found a copper bit and passed it over. "Tell her to put the good stuff in it," he advised.

"She'd better," Ellen grouched, but she accepted the coin and tossed him one of the funeral buns in return. "Here - breakfast! And there's honey tea on the stove. Better grab it quick."

Anaelia and Podina, the laundry maid, were in charge of the kitchen when he passed through, and Dean saw that in addition to the _michlok_ and funeral breads, Podina was making marchpane for the gruesome little skeleton-shaped sweets and biscuits that were also traditional funeral foods. Ellen's set of terracotta biscuit moulds were laid out on the broad kitchen table, and Dean had a sudden disconcerting flashback to watching his mother pressing marchpane into moulds when he was very small. Women in their community received a set as part of their dowry, usually inherited from another woman in the family. There were moulds for every major festival, plus weddings, births and funerals, and they ranged from very crude to highly elaborate. The crates the moulds were stored in were also a tradition, finely carved and decorated, every image on them of significance to the particular family. Ellen's people were weavers, so her crate was covered with colourful weaving patterns along with charms against the breaking of thread. Dean's mother, by contrast, had been from a forester family; he had a cloudy memory of a crate carved with trees, deer and forest spirits.

Dean paused to exchange friendly, bawdy comments with Anaelia - who was old enough to be his grandmother - as he dipped up a mug of honey tea. Podina, who was Jo's age, was not quite as poised and hampered in any case by a terrible crush on Dean and painful awareness of her crippled foot. She shyly pushed a plate full of broken marchpane figures towards him, avoiding his eyes.

"I made the dough too dry first time," she mumbled.

Dean doubted that. Podina was the baker's niece and her marchpane was as good as anything her uncle could make. He saw from the twinkle in Anaelia's eyes that she knew the figures had been 'accidentally' broken too, but she kindly didn't say anything, so he played along.

"I'll just 'hide' these broken ones for you, huh?" he told Podina with a smile, and before she could get too flustered he swooped in and kissed her on the cheek. Then he planted a smacker on Anaelia's cheek too, for good measure. "Bless you, ladies!" And he strolled out of the kitchen with his breakfast.

Back in his rooms, Dean bit into the funeral bun and took a moment to appreciate the rarely-tasted preserved fruit and spices in it. Funerals were 'luxury feasts' around here, one of the strictly limited occasions when it was acceptable - even required - to indulge in things that would normally be well out of everyone's price range. Everything about Funeral Bread spoke of this indulgence - the preserved fruits, especially glacé peel, the powdered white sugar, the spices - cinnamon and anise - and most of all the deep yellow colour of the bread that could only come from saffron, the emperor of all spices, so expensive that it sold for its weight in gold.

Then his eye fell on the broken marchpane skeletons and he remembered the dead priests the sweetmeats were made in memory of. The yellow of the saffron in the bread was suddenly, ominously, reminiscent of the brimstone dabbed on Castiel's fingers the previous day.

These reflections didn't touch his appetite (Dean's brothers both swore he would eat heartily at the end of the world) but his mind started turning the matter over and over again, as he took the meal over to the little window seat where he could stare out as he ate ... and ponder.

Had it not been for Castiel's arrival and intervention, Dean would have treated the temple fire like any other arson attack. In fact, he had been preparing to look at it in conjunction with a couple of other arson attacks over the past month, all of which had been atypical; most arson fires in the city being set with the specific goals of financial gain or revenge or covering up another crime. These fires had no apparent target however. There had been no obvious motive for firing the poverty-stricken temple; a room loaned out to students for quiet study, attached to a large weaver's workshop, had been destroyed; a covered wooden public seating area with hanging baskets that were full of flowers in the summer had been reduced to charcoal and rubble; a dilapidated boathouse on the river had been partially burned down.

Nothing connected these attacks but their seeming randomness, and Dean had reluctantly been of the opinion that it would turn out to be children caught up in a more dangerous than usual form of mischief, until the temple and the deaths of the priests.

Arson was a serious crime in Valdemar, especially in Haven City; a single, small fire could rapidly rage out of control through the tightly-packed buildings of the lower city, especially in multi-level tenements that were not always built and maintained as they should be. Assuming that the culprit wasn't caught by members of his or her own community and dealt with summarily, a convicted arsonist might, if the damage was minimal, get away with a five year sentence in the quarries or mines. Serious damage - the destruction of the temple for example - would merit up to seven or even ten years.

But a death changed everything: that made it a capital crime for which the culprit would hang. Someone under the age of fourteen might, _might_ , get the sentence commuted in some way, especially if they were tried by a Herald, who had unusual discretion in sentencing, but Dean could think of one particularly upsetting case where a twelve year old had been hung for setting fires in the building where his extended family lived, resulting in the deaths of two toddlers. That hadn't been in his sector, thankfully.

Castiel's assertion of demonic involvement in the temple fire did, however bizarrely, offer an alternative line of investigation. The sites might all have some significance to the intended victim - if, that was, they were all connected to the temple fire. And it was worth a candlemark of Dean's time to take a look and see if there was anything they had missed previously that might connect the sites.

Anything like ... sulphur.


	2. Chapter 2

Jo was handing over to Murgo at the Watch House when Dean arrived for his shift, and Henryks was signing his crew out. He leaned over the desk to unhook the board with his team's roll sheet from the wall and heard Henryks say "You wait for me, Rookie."

"I don't need an escort, Sir," Jo said, exasperated. "I can deal with that greasy pig!"

Dean looked around. "Pyote hanging around again?"

"I'm thinking he might use the funeral as an excuse," Henryks said grimly. "Under the circumstances ..."

Dean looked at Jo. "Let Henryks walk with you." She opened her mouth to protest furiously, but he overrode her. "I know you can handle yourself, Jo, but you put the smack-down on Pyote without witnesses and you're cooked. There's too many places he can corner you near Hemp Alley."

Jo could barely contain her outrage. "The sooner he falls down a sewer and chokes on his shit - "

"His kind never do," Murgo told her. There was a warning note in the veteran's voice when he continued: "He ain't never so drunk as he wants you to think, Rookie, an' he's got eyes on both sides of his head. There's folks in the Guard made that mistake an' they ain't where they thought they'd be today, if you take my meaning."

"On that happy note, we'll leave," Henryks said dryly. "Have a quiet shift, Captain."

"Cheers. Have a glass of _michlok_ for me, if you stay for the wake."

This, thankfully, diverted Jo temporarily. " _Michlok_ , yeuch. Who ever thought that stuff was a great way to honour the dead?"

"You can ask _Gar_ Castiel," Henryks said in a long-suffering tone. "Preferably not when he's offering blessings for his dead brethren though." He steered her out of the door.

"I'm going to take roll call," Dean told Murgo. "Oh - wait. How's your drawing hand these days?"

"Fair to middlin'," Murgo said amiably. "What am I drawin'?"

"A picture of _Gar_ Castiel's brother for a handbill. He's missing."

"That boy's got a full plate o' woes," Murgo commented.

"Some people are just targets for crap, I guess," Dean said, with a shrug. "If he gives you a description, do you think you can come up with something?"

"Can try, Boss."

"Fair enough. Alright, let's find out what the evening's got for us …"

Dean took roll call, sent his crew out about their business and retreated to his office to make a vain attempt at controlling his paperwork. He had taken the decision not to personally attend the funeral; it would have smacked of over-attentiveness on his part, possibly attracting the wrong sort of interest. A pair of constables from their sister Watch House on the edge of the city were detailed to look in at the crematorium at regular intervals to ensure everything was going off peacefully. If the deaths had genuinely been caused by arson then there was a good chance the perpetrator would attend the cremations, of course; such a fiery conclusion would surely be attractive to such a person. But Dean no longer really believed it was a human arsonist and in that case Castiel was probably better equipped to recognise and deal with any malign observer than a mere Watch Captain.

Either way, there would be more than enough opportunity for a human or demon to soak up the atmosphere. The cremations would probably take all night.

Meanwhile Dean shuffled, sorted and annotated documents, wondering how the work of Watch Houses could involve so much paper. Scanning some of the documents sent by the Provost Marshal's office, he came to the conclusion that the clerks and scribes there sometimes sent this stuff out just for the hell of it, and regardless of its relevance to the recipients. Did he really need to know that an ordinance had been passed banning the burning of rubbish in private gardens between Spring Equinox and Autumn Equinox? None of the people in his sector _had_ private gardens, unless you counted the window boxes and tubs where they tried to grow a meagre supply of herbs and salad greens.

A report from Henryks cheered him up a little, even though reports from Henryks always fed into Dean's inferiority complex a little, their ruthless, educated efficiency reminding him that the man was better equipped to do the captain's job than he was. But Saivo Lavayuri had been recovered and delivered into the hands of his sister and brother-in-law (not brother after all), and although Henryks had noted some reluctance on the part of the sister to deal with the boy, apparently her husband was confident of his ability to keep Saivo in line. Relieved of that worry (Saivo reminded him entirely too much of his brother Adam at that age), Dean sat down to write a closing report to the Herald's Court confirming that the boy would no longer require bonding.

As the evening progressed, a steady stream of people arrived at the Watch House - some of them less willingly than others. Two early drunks and a girl who was heavily intoxicated with dreamsugar were deposited in the cells set aside for such individuals, where they were under the Custody Officer's watchful eye while they slept it off. A former Guardswoman from another sector who had a current conviction for assault visited the Watch House to notify them, per her sentencing requirements, that she was taking lodgings in the sector and would be required to sign their register once every five days until Vernal Equinox. Several irritable people arrived to pay fines for everything from children causing minor property damage to uncontrolled dogs. Someone handed in a box containing a hurdy-gurdy that had been found under a bench in the market. A complaint was made about a donkey running amuck and nearly overturning two bearers with a sedan chair containing an official from the High Temple.

Murgo put his head around Dean's door at one point. "Cap'n, we got anywhere to keep a dancing nanny-goat?"

Dean gave him a jaundiced look; Murgo's sense of humour was well-known in the Watch. "Well, I don't know, Sergeant," he said dryly. "Is she alone, or did she bring her chorus line with her?"

Murgo chuckled. "Alone, and boy does she look pissed!"

Dean snorted. "Goats always look pissed."

"Yeah, but _this_ goat's wearin' a wee blue dress and little bells on its hocks." Murgo paused, then said blandly, "I was thinkin' we could put her in one of the empty cells with the hurdy-gurdy and let her entertain the drunks."

Dean gave in and laughed. "Whatever, just get her around the back before she starts charging admission. And Murgo - when the owner turns up, tell 'em the fine's a rear leg roasted with mint sauce."

Murgo grinned and disappeared again. A few minutes later Dean heard footsteps passing his door, accompanied by the tapping of hooves and jingling of bells. He shook his head and went back to work.

Perhaps a candlemark later Dean was in the reception area having just dealt with a new complaint by Widow Keffrey about her neighbours ("Why is it always me she has to make her complaint to? Doesn't the woman ever sleep?") when a man burst in who arrested everyone's attention. Only afterwards would Dean remember that he'd been on the short side and very slender; this was completely overshadowed by his enormous moustache, broad straw hat, ridiculously gaudy red shirt with full sleeves, wide-legged green breeches, and a broad belt decorated with lots of shiny pot-metal 'coins'.

He paused in front of the desk and said dramatically: "Hey-ey-la!"

Murgo had been on shift too long to be impressed by this, and there was a look in his eye that suggested this character was two steps away from being shut in a cell just for being offensive to the eyes.

"Lemme guess," Dean drawled. "You lost your dancing goat." He wasn't sure why this notion immediately sprang to mind, but it sounded about right based on the guy's appearance.

The man beamed at him. "Yes! My Esmeralda! You have her safe?"

He had a faint accent that teased at Dean's ears - where had he heard that before? But really he was more interested in getting this clown out of his Watch House and the damn goat with him.

"Possibly. Describe her to the sergeant."

"She is white and lissom with a _leetle_ blue frock and cute little bells that tinkle when she dances - "

"I'll get the goat," Murgo said grumpily, and could be heard muttering _whole damn sector's full o' damn weirdoes_ as he disappeared down the passage.

Dean regarded the visitor with a fascinated eye. "You've upset my sergeant."

The man spread his hands deprecatingly. "A tough audience, Captain, eh? One cannot please everyone."

Dean found himself grinning in spite of himself. The outfit and moustache were so absurd. "You're damn lucky my people didn't stick her in a pot. Do you know how often most of 'em get to eat fresh meat? Next time, tie her up properly."

The man's eyes twinkled mischievously back at him. "But if she is tied up, Captain, how will she dance?"

"I don't believe she dances at all. I never met anyone who managed to train a goat to do anything it doesn't want to do."

"But exactly, she does it because she loves me!"

"Yeah - stop right there, alright? I've met guys like you before and it never ended well," Dean advised him. A pattering of hooves and jingling of bells announced Esmeralda's arrival, and he looked around. "Oh man - that is so _wrong_."

Esmeralda really was wearing a little blue dress, complete with puff sleeves and a sash. She looked deeply unimpressed by it, which made Dean wonder how on earth she had been prevented from just eating the damn thing to get rid of it.

"Esmeralda! _Bebe_ , why did you leave me? The turtle-doves have missed you!"

Esmeralda's expression suggested that her day was not improving. Nor was Murgo's apparently, for he eyed her owner with revulsion and muttered to Dean: "Want me to fetch the restraints?"

"No," Dean said. "Just fine him and get 'em out of here."

"Right." Murgo smiled grimly and raised his voice. "I reckon I heard you say the fine was a rear leg with mint sauce, Cap'n."

The man looked up in sudden alarm.

"Standard fine, Sergeant," Dean said with a sigh. "There's no law against making a fool of a goat - shame, but there it is."

He went back into his office and glanced at the candle-clock on the wall: only a candlemark of the shift left, thank all the gods. But at least there had been no fires or demons. Just a normal shift.

"You know you're really screwed when a normal shift involves dancing goats," Dean told the graven image of the Goddess of Justice on the candle-clock's mount. The goddess having nothing useful to say to him on the subject, he settled down to work out the shift arrangements for the following week.

 

xXx

 

Dean's dreams, when he fell into bed in the early hours of the morning, seemed to revolve around Esmeralda and demons. The goat stood upright on her hind legs in her little dress, clutching at a small basket with her front hooves, and sang eerie high-voiced canticles from the Bel Temple liturgy while her bar-pupil eyes glowed a mocking yellow. Then she morphed into his dead father, still with her yellowy goat-like eyes, and sang the bawdy off-duty songs of the City Guard until Dean woke up, sweating and disorientated.

Needless to say, he was left feeling grumpy and poorly-rested. Giving up on sleep, he went down to the laundry where he stripped off, washed and shaved in a bucket of soapy water provided by shy Podina. He knew that she was peeking at him from behind a supposed screen of drying sheets; normally he found this funny, but today the awareness of eyes on him when his back was turned itched like an ant-bite. Finally he lost his temper and yanked the sheets aside, without bothering to wrap the drying cloth around himself first.

"If you're that desperate to ogle me, kid, just _look_ , dammit, but don't keep ducking out of sight every time I turn around or one of these days I'll throw a knife at you by mistake!"

Podina squealed and bolted out of the laundry.

Dean swore furiously, dragged his towel around his waist, and went to find Ellen. She was in the taproom. Unfortunately, at this hour of the day so were a number of locals and he was greeted with a chorus of whoops, cheers and catcalls at his state of undress, which only annoyed him more.

"Oh come on, we're all grown-ups, and it's not like I've got anything weird!" he said indignantly.

"We noticed," Ellen told him grimly, "and we're not impressed. Get your wet ass out of my bar and make yourself decent."

"Look, I shouted at Podina, I didn't mean to but – "

"Next time I'll make her wait out here for the parade, with the rest of us," Ellen said, and there was a hint of a grin at the corner of her mouth. "Go."

Dean turned around – and ran straight into Castiel. They stared at each other, startled and practically nose to nose for a moment. Castiel's eyes, he noticed, really were astonishingly blue.

"Personal space, Cas," Dean said finally. "It measures about the length of your arm between two people, and it's a concept we're fond of here in Valdemar."

"My apologies." Castiel backed up a step or two. Then he seemed to register that something wasn't quite right. His eyes flicked over Dean and took in his near-nudity, and he hastily looked away – _well_ away. A flush of dull red began to make its way up his neck from his collar.

Not much embarrassed Dean at the best of times, not even being gleefully hooted at by all his neighbours, but for once even his armadillo-like skin failed him. He badly wanted to be able to laugh this off, could even feel a laugh welling up in his chest, but it wasn't the right kind of laughter and he was horrified to realise that his face was beginning to burn with an even more impressive blush than Castiel's. Little though he liked it, there was only one thing Dean could do.

Taking a firm grip on his towel, he beat a fast retreat.

 

xXx

 

The really stupid thing, Dean thought furiously, as he roughly towelled himself dry and pulled his clothes on, was that there was absolutely _no reason_ for him to be embarrassed about the encounter. If anything, Castiel's furious blush and averted eyes should have been funny to him; after all, he knew the guy was a priest and he knew Bel priests practised celibacy. That pretty much guaranteed a level of prudery that people in this district were strangers to. Dean's accidental display of flesh would be considered mildly joke-worthy by his neighbours but hardly deserving of an official proclamation, while Castiel's response to it should have produced only smiles and shrugs. What Dean _should_ have done, and his neighbours had probably been waiting for, was to make a bawdy joke before casually leaving the taproom.

He could only imagine what their reaction to a blush and flustered exit would be. Hopefully just a week of teasing, but if he was unlucky - a lot of interested stares and pointed questions.

He could do with asking himself a few pointed questions, if it came to that. As he buckled his belt and laced his boots, Dean forced himself to be honest in the most heavily guarded part of his own mind, even if he would never let that happen anywhere else.

_Gar_ Castiel was a very attractive man.

Oh, Dean was genuinely, actively attracted to women too, but he had never lost sight of the fact that he was attracted to men, although he had learned early to suppress that side of his nature. This had nothing to do with the law of the land (officially, Valdemar was as tolerant of same-sex relationships as it was of a multitude of religions and individual customs) or even the attitude of the local community (it wasn't celebrated the way mixed-sex relationships were, but it was viewed with a comfortable level of tolerance). But it did have everything to do with his difficult and complicated relationship with his father, who had most definitely _not_ been tolerant of such things. Where Jon Winchester had come by such a viewpoint, Dean didn't know. Perhaps it had prevailed in their home village; he had been too young when they left to know one way or the other.

What he did know was that his father had never made any bones about his opinion of such things, and when, aged sixteen, Dean formed an intense relationship with a young City Guard cadet and his father had found out about it, the fallout had been … traumatic. Enough so that he had buried his interest in men deep and proceeded to cut a swathe through the female population instead, something that had not been difficult with his looks. And he had become good enough at suppressing those feelings that passing off the encounter with Castiel in the taproom shouldn't even have needed conscious thought.

So what had thrown him so badly that he'd reacted like a startled virgin?

Examining the incident as dispassionately as he could, Dean came to the conclusion that it had been something to do with Castiel's reaction. The fast glance that had taken in every inch of Dean from toe to crown – and all points in between – followed by the quickly averted eyes and rapid blush.

Yes, the blush. The response of a man who wasn't quite as secure in his celibacy as he knew he ought to be. And apparently Dean wasn't the only one who was suppressing a non-conformist attraction.

_Huh_. _How about that?_

He was still a man, Dean reminded himself sharply. He was also still a priest, still vowed to chastity – and still there to hunt down a demon that was setting fires in the city. And when he'd done that, he would go back to Jkatha. He would leave.

_Everyone leaves eventually._

 

xXx

 

When Dean finally took himself down to the kitchen to find breakfast – or at least a mug of tea – he found Ellen and Castiel in the kitchen, talking. Castiel was thanking her for the wake she had hosted the previous evening, and mentioning in particular the traditional foods that had been served and that the dead priests would have been very gratified by the attentions. Ellen was being her usual gruff self, of course, but Dean could tell she was pleased. He wondered if Castiel was just being tactful, but then he remembered the incident in the taproom and concluded not; this was not a man to whom dissembling came naturally.

They both looked up when he walked in, but Dean was in control of himself now and merely greeted them amiably. Castiel was back in control of himself too; composed to the point of inscrutability as he inclined his head in response.

"There's a couple of funeral buns left if you're looking for breakfast," Ellen told him. "Bit stale – I'll toast 'em for you. Coffee in the pot if you want some."

"Real coffee, or that dandelion stuff?" Dean asked her warily. There had been an incident a few months previous where a travelling merchant had sold Ellen a sack of what had appeared to be coffee … until she got it home and discovered that a thin layer of genuine coffee beans lay on top of many pounds of a decidedly inferior product. Not that it was unusual to make a drink from roasted, ground dandelion roots but the resultant brew could only be mistaken for coffee if you were suffering from an apocalyptic hangover. This did not stop Ellen trying to foist it onto the unsuspecting occasionally. She had paid for it and had every intention of using it up, and since an unspecified breakfast each day was included in Dean's rent, he had to watch out, especially if he owed her money.

"Real coffee, and think yourself lucky. I don't bring it out for just anyone."

Clearly Castiel rated as 'company' then.

"Thanks, Ellen." Dean poured himself a cupful, added a little milk, and went to take her vacated seat at the kitchen table while she toasted the buns. He looked across at the priest. "I take it everything went smoothly last night?"

Castiel inclined his head. He looked tired, which was hardly surprising if he had been up all night watching over the pyres. "The priests of Sert are kindly keeping the _Gar-gellim_ 's ashes for me until I receive instruction from the Mother Temple. It may be that I will take them back with me, but more likely I will be instructed to scatter them here."

Dean raised an eyebrow at him. Just waiting to receive the instruction would take weeks. "You're planning an extended visit? I thought you only had digs for five days?"

"I have the ambassador's goodwill for five days," Castiel corrected him. "My mission will take as long as it takes."

Conscious of Ellen's listening ears, Dean said, "You're going to need some place to stay, then, because I don't think we're going to find your brother that easy."

"I will rent lodgings if necessary."

"Alright. Either way, I need you to come into the Watch House on my shift and give a description of your brother – Gabriel, right? – to one of my sergeants. He's a pretty fair artist and he'll work up a handbill of Gabriel that we can hand out to all the other Watch and Guard Houses in the city. Think you can give us a good enough description?"

Castiel blinked. "I can do better – I have a miniature of him with me. It is quite accurate."

"Huh. Well, that'll help."

Ellen put a plate with the toasted funeral buns in front of him along with the honey-crock. "I'll be in the taproom if you boys need me."

"Thanks, Ellen." Dean watched her go, then turned back to Castiel and switched to Jkathan. "I doubt anyone's listening in here, but just in case … I know they don't speak the language. " He dropped an indecent amount of honey from the dipper onto his toast; Ellen knew his sweet tooth well. "I need to show you something at the Watch House anyway. I got to thinking yesterday and the temple wasn't the only unexplained fire around here. Or elsewhere in the city, for that matter, but I don't have jurisdiction anywhere else. The thing is, I checked out a couple of the other sites and guess what I found?"

Castiel's eyes narrowed. "Sulphur?"

"Right." Dean took a bite of his toast, chewed, swallowed, and took a gulp of coffee to wash it down. "Not at all of them, but a couple have been open to the weather for a while, so it could have washed away. What I couldn't figure before is why those sites were chosen, since it's not like they have anything in common, and I'd pretty much decided it had to be kids or a crazy person. But they could have significance to the victim, right?"

"Absolutely. What manner of places are they?"

"A public seating area with a wooden roof. A boathouse on the river. And a place used by college students for private study – not a school, just a quiet place to go read stuff, I guess. None of them are in the same general area, they just happen to be in this sector of the city."

Castiel considered this. "Then perhaps we're looking for a student of some kind. Or a teacher perhaps, but the _Gar-gellim_ specified that the victim is young. Would students have access to all of these places?"

Dean thought about it. "Anyone can use the public benches, provided they're not causing trouble. The owner of the study room was charging a copper a candlemark, but some of the students come from wealthy families, so being charged doesn't mean much. I'm not sure about the boathouse, though. It was pretty run down already, but … I don't know. Sometimes students hang around places for fun, hold unofficial parties, stuff like that, and sometimes they get up to trouble. We get kids hauled in all the time for smoking dreamsugar and yipweed, or just plain getting drunk, and they usually find places like abandoned buildings to do it in."

"I hadn't considered that before, but strong drink or drugs would make the victim more vulnerable to the _garuya_ ," Castiel remarked. "What of students using the temple? There are many temples in this city – why did he go to the temple of Bel?"

Dean felt a tickle of unease at this, although he didn't know why. "Bel's a fire goddess, so it makes a kind of sense, but it still has to be someone familiar with it. And I know they didn't have much of a congregation there, but they had _some_. So – he could be someone from this community. That narrows it down quite a bit."

"Are many young men from this community students?"

"At the Collegia? No," Dean admitted. "A handful at most, kids who are really bright and were lucky enough to have teachers who noticed that, who could get bursaries to support them, and who had parents who agreed to let them go. So they won't be from the streets directly around here, because the people here think a smart kid should take up an apprenticeship here in the community. I take a lot of shit for that myself, because I let Sam and Adam go to the Collegia when Dad died."

Castiel looked up. "Sam and Adam?"

"My brothers." Dean saw the look on his face and was immediately on the defensive. "Hey – no! It can't be either of them, they would have told me if they were in trouble. The gods know they tell me quick enough when anything else is wrong."

"Were they familiar with the temple?" Castiel asked neutrally.

Dean snorted. "Sam knew it was there, yeah, but I doubt Adam even knows there's a goddess called Bel."

"But your family worshipped our Mother – "

"No," Dean said flatly, then amended this. "Not the whole family, anyway. My grandparents took _me_ to the temple at Dell's Crossing. Sam and Adam never went near it, my dad wouldn't allow it."

He saw the flash of curiosity in Castiel's eyes, but fortunately the priest took the hint and didn't push any further. For which Dean was profoundly grateful, for there was no way he was telling him about the screwed up shit in his family, and if Castiel had tried to press for an explanation Dean would probably have had to murder him. He didn't talk to anybody about that crap. Some things were just better left buried in the past.

"Sam," Castiel mused. Dean stiffened, but relaxed again when the priest merely continued, "Is that short for Samial? That's an old Jkathan name."

"Samuel," Dean corrected him, and Castiel smiled slightly.

"Ah yes – the East Border variation. Adam is unusual though. I'm not familiar with that name."

"I think it's traditional in his mom's family. They weren't from Dell's Crossing." Castiel gave him an enquiring look, and Dean shrugged. "Kate was my dad's second wife. I don't know how or where he met her, but I'm pretty sure her people were Valdemaran. She didn't speak our language."

"I see. Your own name puzzles me too."

"Probably the pronunciation. I'm named after my grandmother – her name was Deanna."

"So it should be pronounced _Dee-an_. That makes sense."

"That's how people said it when I was a kid. Not Dad, though. He wasn't from Dell's Crossing either, and I'm not sure how he ended up there, but I'm pretty sure his people came from somewhere in Jkatha because I don't think my grandparents would have let Mom marry him otherwise." Dean finished the last bite of his toast and poured them both more coffee. No sense in letting it go cold. "So, that's me. What about you, Cas? Is Gabriel your only brother, or are there more of you at home?"

"Many more of us," Castiel said mildly. "My father has had three wives and many mistresses. The eldest of his children are twins, my brothers Mikiel and Luciel, who are the sons of his first wife. Gabriel is the only child of his second wife, and I and my sister Anna are the children of his current wife. Of the children of his mistresses, I know only of Uriel, Rafiel, Rachel, Virgil and Balthazar, but there are undoubtedly others."

"Wow," was all Dean could think of to say.

Castiel smiled. "My father is a very wealthy and powerful man."

"Yeah, he'd have to be. So how did you end up as a priest? Doesn't seem like the obvious career for someone from a family like yours."

"Father wished to dedicate a son to the gods and I volunteered." Castiel's smile tightened. "It was the only way I could get away from him."

 

xXx

 

It wasn't entirely a lie. Castiel had certainly wanted to leave home, if only to get away from the never-ending battles between the twins, but there had also been an element of wanting to get away from his father's political machinations and the domestic turbulence that his wives and mistresses created. But having said that, he had also been happy to join his Order. Technically it was a military Order - Bel was not one of the peaceful goddesses - and although Castiel had noted with amusement Dean's surface thoughts on his appearance when they first met, he was in fact a highly competent archer and swordsman.

But it had been his intellect and steady, calm disposition that had encouraged one of the two remaining _han'garuyim_ to apprentice him. Castiel had known from the start that he was not particularly like the other Cadet-Novices, most of whom were not intellectual at all; his personality was a combination of cool restraint and passionate, questing curiosity. He did not believe, and never had, that he possessed a vocation in the sense that the other novices did. On the other hand, his devotion to Bel was quite genuine. He had been open about these things with the senior _Gar-gellim_ who had questioned him relentlessly upon his petition to join the Order. It had been the _han'garuyim_ , the exorcists, who had persuaded the Master of the Order to admit him, recognising in him someone with the conflicting gifts that best comprised a warrior who fought demons rather than men.

This wasn't quite the career path Castiel's father had intended for him, but as he undertook all the same basic training as the other Cadet-Novices, and the Order was disinclined to discuss the _han'garuyim_ with outsiders, it had never become an issue. His father had wanted him to become a priest; a _han'garuya_ had to be a priest and Castiel had promptly been ordained well in advance of any of his novice class, much to his father's satisfaction. The rest had been none of his business.

Had he really wanted to become priest though? That was a question Castiel had never really asked himself. The work had from the beginning been intellectually stimulating and satisfying, although the priestly profession he joined was a dying one; the actual need for traditional religious exorcists, in a time when mages were common in every kingdom but the one where he currently found himself, was shrinking. He had enjoyed the extensive studies and the practice of the arts he had been taught, and had never made any objection to any of the duties he had been expected to undertake, any more than he had objected to the vows he had taken. He had never doubted the path he was on. Until now.

One startled moment in a shabby tavern bar, and suddenly everything Castiel was and had been for his entire adult life had become as constricting as a noose around his neck.

It hadn't been Dean's near-nudity that triggered this revelation – well, all right, that had certainly been a factor, but a minor one. Castiel had been aware of his own sexual preferences since adolescence and it would take a lot more than a bare chest dripping water everywhere to shake his composure. Even a chest as aesthetically pleasing as Dean's.

What had taken him by surprise had been Dean's reaction to _him_. Castiel had caught the irritated jangle of surface thoughts and emotions as Dean spoke to Ellen – _don't want to stab the kid by mistake I'm too tired for this shit why do people teach their daughters that sex is wrong I shouldn't have shouted gonna have to wash my feet again_ – but the young captain was still in control of himself, his mental shields underneath were still in place. And then he'd turned around, found himself nose to nose with Castiel (entirely accidental – after years of keeping an uncomfortable distance in the cloisters, Castiel had no way to judge the correct distance between acquaintances) and –

And Castiel had heard the tiny mental _oh_ as Dean's shields had unexpectedly dropped.

And because he was stupid enough to be actively _trying_ to read Dean's surface thoughts all the time – a terrible breach of Mindspeaking protocols, what was he _thinking_ to be doing that? – Castiel had been utterly unprepared for the two or three seconds when he had active access to the much deeper, private thoughts underneath.

There were no actual words. He wouldn't really have expected them either, because this wasn't a conversation and Dean was the kind of man who kept 'verbal' thoughts very much on this surface of his mind. But if he'd had to put words to it, Dean's first reaction would probably have been something like _hello handsome_. That all on its own would have been interesting, because Castiel had formed the opinion that he was very much a ladies' man; Dean's surface thoughts had all tended heavily in that direction so far, so to discover that underneath he found men attractive was unexpected.

Then the images had hit, and with them the associated emotions. That was the problem with improperly controlled mental connections like this – it was possible to send and receive (or accidentally drop into a person's head) huge 'packets' of complex imagery in the blink of eye, potentially leaving the receiver staggering, mentally and physically, as they tried to deal with it. Castiel had reeled mentally and been forced to lock the whole lot away at the back of his mind until he had an opportunity to sort through it and deal with what it represented.

He knew what Ellen's interested customers thought they were witnessing when he blushed and looked away from Dean, but Castiel had only been grateful that they didn't know what had really happened. Fortunately Dean's split-second lapse had been just that. In the time it took him to draw another breath, his shields were back in place again and he stalked out of the taproom like an offended cat, trailing an angry mental _what the ever-loving fuck!_ behind him.

Castiel had been forced to sit down to recover, which was how he came to be taking coffee with Ellen in her kitchen when Dean finally reappeared, fully dressed and shields locked tight around his mind.

He didn't allow himself to look at the bundle of mental images Dean had forced upon him until Dean himself had departed for his shift at the Watch House and Castiel was back at the embassy building, ostensibly to check in with the Ambassador's assistant and collect the miniature of Gabriel for the "missing" handbills. Then he took a seat in his neat but sparsely-furnished room and cautiously probed the mental 'packet' of information.

Ethically, this was decidedly questionable. On the other hand, he hadn't _asked_ Dean to show him this, and now that he had the images in his mind the only way he could deal with them was to sort through them. It was a decidedly uncomfortable position to be in. And it was entirely his own fault that he was in it at all, so a little moral discomfort was far from an unreasonable price to pay.

A deft mental touch, and the bundle unfurled itself completely, images and emotions all laid open before him.

_guilt lust shame fear grief_

\- all tinged with the dull tang of temporal distance. Memory.

_loneliness_

_loss_

\- both the memory of them, and the continuing pain of something greatly missed.

_a face, youthful, handsome, beardless, lips curved and eyes crinkled in laughter, trust, friendship, longing, lust_

_the fierce, uncomplicated love of youth_

_happiness_

_loss_

_pain_

There was a name there, but Castiel deliberately shied away from it, just as he deliberately shied away from probing too deeply into the intimate memories associated with it. He saw enough to know that this was a lover, probably a first love, and it was bad enough that he knew this without Dean's explicit permission to receive the information. He wanted to leave open the possibility of Dean telling him about it at some point if he chose; he didn't _have_ to view it in detail. Nor did he have to view the two knife-sharp and painful memories that followed it – it was enough to sample their flavour ( _a brutal humiliation before others, a terrible wrenching loss, followed by a more private shame-filled confrontation)_ and register, briefly, other faces associated with them. Two young boys, one dark-haired, one blond, wide-eyed and frightened at witnessing a horrible verbal assault on their older brother. And a man, older, dark-haired, stubbled, with the florid complexion and red-veined eyes of an habitual drinker, face contorted with anger, disgust, contempt.

_Dad_.

With an effort that felt like moving a mountain, Castiel finally managed to put all this aside. And he told himself, bitterly, to keep a sharp watch in future on his own tendency to eavesdrop on Dean Winchester's thoughts.

 

xXx

 

Sergeant Murgo studied the miniature portrait with interest.

"Expensive work," he commented. "Nice, sharp colours ..."

"You are an artist?" Castiel asked him curiously.

Murgo waggled one hand in the air, making a face. "I can draw," he acknowledged. "Would've liked to learn to paint, but paintin's a game for them with money and my folk's carter folk, yeah? No use for paintin'. Pity, but there it is. I can draw a good 'nough picture for a handbill though." He looked at Castiel under his shaggy eyebrows for a moment, and his eyes were kindly. "I'll be takin' good care of this picture for you too, Priest-man. Don't you worry." He pondered it again for a moment, before shaking his head a little. "Y'know, I could've sworn I seen this lad somewhere before."

"People used to say that to me all the time at home," Castiel said wryly. "Gabriel is not easily forgotten. But I cannot think he would have stayed long in this city. The best I hope for is information."

"Don't be too sure of that," Dean said, appearing out of his office and leaning on the desk for a moment. "There aren't too many places for a person to go from here. Haven is Valdemar's only city and even the biggest towns are pretty small. He couldn't cross into Iftel from here, because they don't allow direct passage across our border, so unless he went to Karse - not likely - or Hardorn, he could still be here. Unless he had a fancy to travel into the Pelagirs I suppose."

"Anything is possible," Castiel admitted, "but Gabriel is a man who likes people. His love of adventure is limited to the kind of adventures that provide an audience."

"Sounds like an interesting guy."

"That depends upon how much one likes tricks and jokes being played upon one when one shares a bedchamber with him," Castiel said, and the remembered aggravation was written all over his face, much to Dean's amusement. "Also, trying to hide some of his escapades from our father was ... tiresome."

Dean chuckled. "I'll bet - I've got two brothers myself. Anyway, come on through, Cas, and we'll sort out the paperwork for the temple."

"There is more paperwork?"

"Hells, yeah! You've seen my office - there's _always_ more paperwork."

Castiel had to agree that this was true. In the short space of time since he'd last been inside Dean's office, the paper piles certainly seemed to have grown. Once again, they went through the ritual of clearing documents off chairs and the edge of the desk.

"I could do with a week where the rest of the world just, you know, sleeps or goes away or something," Dean grumbled, "and then maybe I could get caught up on this stuff for a while."

"What you need is a clerk," Castiel told him.

"Yeah, that ain't happening. Alright, the temple was demolished this morning, so I just need you to sign off on the work as soon as you've taken a look at the site and confirmed it's been done properly. I took a quick look earlier and I'm happy that it's as safe as it can be, but they can't remove the rubble until you agree to it too." Dean handed over the Herald's work order, which had now been annotated and signed by at least two other people, one of whom clearly had very dirty hands and only a rudimentary understanding of pens. "Just to explain - because this is a Herald's order and the building was a temple, the Crown will pay for the work to demolish it, but in return you have to sign over the rights to the fabric of the building - that's the bricks, slates and so on. They can be sold to cover the cost of the work, you see? The land remains the property of your Mother Temple though."

"I understand. That seems very fair, and my Ambassador will be relieved. I think he was concerned that he would be obliged to pay for the work."

"Considering the price of building materials right now, I think it'll all work out. And once the plot has been sold, the Mother Temple will be better off. There's been some enquiries already about when it'll become available - a couple of the nearest merchants are interested in expanding their existing warehouses."

"It seems a pity," Castiel commented. "I suppose there are no temples to Bel left in Valdemar now."

"There's still the one in my home village at Dell's Crossing," Dean said. He saw Castiel's surprised expression, and amended this. "At least, as far as I know it's still there. The priest wasn't old and I'm pretty sure I remember he had a novice. If you take that route on your way home, I'll give you a map and you can stop off there on your way."

"Perhaps I shall. Do you still have family there?"

Dean hesitated for a second. "I don't know if my grandparents are still alive. Maybe." He changed the subject. "On that other matter ..." He unlocked a drawer in his desk and brought out a grubby handkerchief that had been gathered into a crude pouch and knotted at the top. When he undid this and spread the square of linen out, a small heap of dusty charcoal smeared with sulphur was revealed. "This came from the remains of the boathouse. It's not much, but it shouldn't be there at all."

"Agreed," Castiel said, stirring the pile with the tip of his little finger. "This is the best evidence of the _garuya_ we are likely to find until we locate the intended victim. It would be helpful to know who makes use of the three places."

"I've got people on that - nothing suspicious in that, I'd be asking anyway, but if the boathouse was being used for parties or drug-taking, then the kids aren't going to be lining up to admit it." Dean made a face. "I'll be having dinner with my brothers some time in the next few days, so I can ask them if they know about any of the arson sites. Adam's more likely to know about the boathouse than Sam, but he's also more likely to give me attitude about it, especially since I've got to tackle him about some other stuff." He huffed an irritated breath. "I might just get Sammy to ask him. He's less likely to get a face on for him."

"You have a difficult relationship with him?"

Dean shrugged. "I guess he feels he doesn't really know me all that well. I didn't spend a lot of time around him until Dad died, but he and Sam grew up together."

"And yet you get along well with Sam."

"Sam's just a big girl, everyone's got to hug and hold hands and be a big happy family together." Dean scooped up the handkerchief and debris and swept them into the waste paper basket beside his desk. "Look, Cas - I'm not gonna to lie to you, this could take serious time to investigate. The cover story about your brother is good, but what are you planning to do with yourself while you wait? I can't openly involve you in the investigation, that would raise questions. And how will you manage for money once you leave the embassy?"

"I have money, you need not concern yourself with that," Castiel said. "And as I have already told you, I will take lodgings somewhere. But it may be as well if I do so sooner rather than later, as the Ambassador is uncomfortable with my presence. He is ... not one of my father's political allies."

"Hoo-boy," Dean said, making a face.

"Indeed. As to how I mean to spend my time, I will be consulting the books I brought with me and looking for similar such books here in Valdemar." He saw Dean's expression. "I assure you, they will exist! They may be within the keeping of religious orders or owned by scholars - I have the names of several individuals here in Haven who are known far and wide to be experts in creatures of the Abyss. I mean to make contact with them."

"Alright," Dean said dubiously.

"Also ... a thought occurs to me." Castiel's eyes were roving over the untidy office, before flicking back to Dean's face. "It would be helpful if I had a legitimate reason for being at hand, yes?"

"Well yeah, but - "

"Perhaps I could spend a little time each day assisting you with your paperwork. I am a competent administrator; I assisted the Master of our Order in just such a function after I was ordained."

Dean blinked. "Er … that's an interesting offer. And don't get me wrong, I'd love to take you up on it, but I can't pay you and – "

"I am not asking to be paid. I told you, I have money."

Dean gave him a long stare. "Cas – not to be rude, but you're a priest. Are you telling me your Order is going to fund an indefinite stay here while you hunt for this demon?"

"Not at all," Castiel said. "My Order funded my journey as far as Valdemar, and then I was to have been accommodated by the _Gar-gellim_ at the temple. My expenses since then have been paid for by Gabriel's mother. When she heard I was being sent to Valdemar, she commissioned me to try and find word of his whereabouts."

"Are you telling me this story we cooked up about finding your brother is _true?_ "

Castiel began to smile. "Do you think I carry his portrait with me everywhere?"

"But – "

"The most successful diversionary stories are the true ones, _Kapitane_ , do you not agree? I confess that I held out little hope of finding Gabriel, but he was last heard of here and his mother …" He grimaced. "There were some unfortunate consequences to his flight, and his mother took much of the blame in his absence. There was a marriage arranged and the bride's family exacted a heavy financial penalty of my father for the default. I imagine there were social consequences too, especially as Gabriel was known to have been involved with a woman from the far south who was said to be a seer or prophetess of some kind. She left the kingdom shortly before he ran away."

Dean winced. "Guess Ellen's right when she says every family's more screwed in its own way than a two-legged cat with a litter of six-legged kittens."

"I have no idea what that means, but I will take your word for it." Castiel tilted his head to one side, studying him. "So. Will you allow me to assist you, _Kapitane_ , for as long as I am here?"

"Cas …" Dean sighed. "Look, you have no idea how much it kills me to say this, but I can't – "

He was interrupted by a rap on the door, and Henryks opened it and looked around the frame. Dean could just see Jody standing behind him.

"Crap – I forgot I was meeting you guys about the scheduling this month. Cas, we're going to have to finish this later. Do you want to check out the temple site and get this paperwork signed off?"

"Of course," Castiel said calmly. He stood up and courteously offered his chair to Jody. Then he wrong-footed Dean completely by saying to her and Henryks in the same calm tone, "As it seems likely I will be obliged to stay in Haven for some time, I have been offering _Kapitane_ Winchester my services as an unpaid scribe for the duration. He is reluctant to accept, however."

They both looked at Dean as though he was completely mad.

"Why?" Jody demanded. "Damn, Captain – I'd be biting his hand off if it were me. 'Side from anything else, I know there used to be a third chair in here somewhere, but no one's seen it since Sovvan. I've been waiting for all this goddamn paper to fall and crush you to death ever since Ash had to leave."

"If you're worrying about District Command," Henryks added (he knew Dean's paranoia about their superiors well), "chances are, they'll never know. And – did you say _unpaid?_ " He raised his eyebrows at Castiel. "Damn. Is that temple of yours rich or something?"

That made Castiel smile. "No, but my brother's mother is."

"Not much of an incentive for us to find him too fast," Jody drawled, amused.

"Unpaid, Dean," Henryks said firmly. "Command can't quibble about that."

"No, but they _can_ quibble about me allowing a foreign national to handle official papers," Dean pointed out, glaring at Castiel. Castiel seemed remarkably unintimidated by this.

"Because you stash state secrets in this office," Henryks said dryly. "What sensitive documents is he going to have access to, exactly? Our figures for the number of drunks we arrested in the last quarter? We're not the City Guard, Captain. The worst he can find out is how little they pay us for putting our necks on the line day after day."

"Ain't that the truth," Jody chimed in.

They both looked at him expectantly, and from the doorway Castiel was watching him with overt amusement.

Dean grumbled a little under his breath, before pointing a finger at Castiel. "Anyone ever tells you I run this Watch House, remember it's a lie. I'm just here to be the fall guy when something goes wrong. Or for when District Command decide to kick my ass for hiring priests with swords and crossbows to do my paperwork without paying them."

"Of course, _Kapitane_. I will return later and begin, yes?"

"Right," Dean grumbled. "Hey, Cas," he called, just as Castiel was about to close the door behind himself. "Tell me one thing. What's your stepmother planning to do to Gabriel if you find him for her?"

Castiel made a wry face. "Nothing that will encourage him to hurry back to her house, I fear."

 

xXx

 

"I've been thinking," Dean said, when Castiel returned to the Watch House later. "If you need lodgings, you could just crash with me. I've still got the spare room Sam and Adam use when they come home, and they won't be needing it again until Midsummer at the earliest. I pay for it, so Ellen can't quibble. You'll have to pay for meals and laundry, but you're good for that, right?"

"I am, but - are you sure?"

Dean raised an eyebrow at him. "You got any nasty habits you don't want to share?"

Castiel smiled. "I hope not. I pray, of course, but quietly and in private. And I am sure Gabriel would have taken revenge many years ago if I snored."

"There you go, then. It's not the Embassy but it's clean and tidy, and Ellen's food is as good as you'll get anywhere in this part of the city."

"It will be a relief to quit the Embassy, in truth," Castiel admitted. "The Ambassador regards me with suspicion and thus so do his aides. His servants spy upon me."

"Huh. Ellen's laundry-maid spies on _me_ ," Dean offered.

Castiel's face lit up with amusement. "So I heard."

"Yeah." Dean's face was a mixture of embarrassment and rueful amusement. "I'll get Ellen to speak to her. Hot washing and shaving water comes with the rent, but you have to go down to the laundry for it. Podina's supposed to make herself scarce when any lodgers are washing up in there. I'm always scared I'll be twitchy or half-asleep sometime and accidentally fling a knife at her if she surprises me. Speaking of which - don't you need to practice with that sometime?" He pointed to the sword hanging at Castiel's hip.

"Yes, but I've been reluctant to use the Embassy facilities."

"I'll bet. Well, if you're working with us, then you get to use the training yard out back. It's not much, but if you need anything special for sword work, we can probably come up with something." Dean looked apologetic. "No call for swords in our work, it's more batons and hand-to-hand. Everyone has to learn the basics of knife work and how to handle a crossbow, but that's more so they know how to deal with people trying to use them on _us_. We do stuff like riot training with the City Guard on a regular schedule too."

"It seems barely adequate," Castiel said, frowning. "What do your people do when someone faces them with a much superior weapon?"

"Depends on what you call a superior weapon," Dean said dryly. "Most dangerous weapon anyone can use is their brain, and we teach our people to use theirs. The rule is - you don't face down anyone with something like a mace or warhammer, and never a bow. You back off and call in the Guard, since they're armoured and we're not. Bows are pretty rare in Haven though, since anyone who isn't in the Guard or a Herald has to have a permit to own one in the city. I have a couple, but that's because my people were foresters."

Castiel was interested in this. "You can use them?"

"Sure, I'm a fair shot."

"I should like to try a little target practice with you sometime. And what of an opponent with a sword?"

"Nobody around here can afford one," Dean said wryly, "but you get highborn kids slumming it, and they sometimes have swords." He reached into a hidden pocket down the length of the right leg of his breeches and pulled out a long, narrow baton encircled by multiple thin metal bands. "With training and practice, you can teach an average swordsman a pretty sharp lesson with this thing. Local people call it 'the Beak's Bully'."

"Beak?"

"Nickname for the Watch. No idea where it came from." He smacked it on his palm once, then held it out to Castiel, who took it - and raised his eyebrows in surprise.

"Heavy! What is it made of?"

"Ironwood, shod with an iron head and bands." Dean took it back, bent and rapped the head on the floor, making a loud ringing sound on the stone flags. "Acts as an alarm call, too. Rap this on the kerbstones and it can be heard from streets away, especially at night. We can take on a swordsman without too much trouble - only a professional fighter would be a problem for us, and that's really rare. Mostly it's juiced-up highborn kids spoiling for trouble. They're not ready for something this heavy being used against them and we're authorised to act with due force if they refuse to back off. That's when they get their arms broken, and we aim for the sword-arm. Isn't a judge in the city won't back us if that happens and any angry parent who tries to make trouble over it is liable to find the fine for affray doubled on the spot. We don't wear armour or carry shields, remember."

Dean made a couple of experimental swings with the baton. "Most people don't argue with this thing. But it takes strong arms, brains and practice, which is why Jo only goes out with a partner right now. She hasn't passed the baton test yet, but she's doing good. She puts the work in, I'll give her that."

"Women are often more motivated," Castiel noted. "There is a female military order in Seejay - the Sisterhood of Har. Only a fool would fail to respect them. I respect the women in your Watch and would not wish to cross them."

Dean was pleased about this. The women constables had a tough life, even with the sharply enforced rules demanding equal treatment with their male colleagues, but they worked hard and there wasn't one in the Ropewalk Watch House that he wouldn't trust to have his back in a tight corner.

"I got good people here," he said.

"So I have seen."

"Alright, then - you want to get started on this mess?" Dean eyed the paperwork doubtfully. "Ash used to have a system, but they whipped him out of here so fast, I never had a chance to learn it."

"Then I shall devise another," Castiel said calmly, "and I will make notes so that you know where everything is when I leave. We should begin by establishing some basic categories - "

They were interrupted by a rap on the door, followed by Murgo looking around the edge. "Sorry, Cap'n. Call out to Lucet Street for ye."

Dean sighed. "Sorry, Cas - I'll be back."

 

xXx

 

"Hope you don't mind cats," Dean said, leading Castiel into his set of rooms above the Roadhouse Inn much later. He stooped to pick up the cat in question, who was brushing against his legs with an affection that was probably directly related to the proximity of her next meal. "This is Baby. She was Adam's cat, but she hates him. I cut a deal with her - she gets food and a place to sleep with me in return for her helping Ellen with the mice and rats."

"There were many cats at the High Temple - they are one of Bel's totem animals, according to the oldest lore." Castiel put his bags down just inside the doorway and reached out to scratch gently between Baby's ears. She began to purr, butting her head up into his hand demandingly. "But I have never seen a cat that looks like this before."

Baby was a little bigger than the average domestic cat, and she had short fur that was mostly black with silver-grey paws, tail tip, inner ears and a silver splotch on her chest. Her eyes were a dark amber colour.

"The fisher-folk on Lake Evendim call them Scallycats. They carry them on the fishing boats. Supposedly they aren't pure housecat, but a domestic cat cross-bred with some kind of wild cat from the Pelagirs." Dean brushed his hand over her fur affectionately. "I don't know if that's true, but Baby's pretty smart compared to the other cats around here. Aren't you, sweetheart?"

"And why do you call her Baby?"

Right on cue, Baby let out one of her cries that sounded eerily like the wails of a neglected infant. Dean grinned. "That's why!" He put her down on the floor and gestured vaguely at the rooms before them. "This is it - it's not much, but it's home."

There were two bedrooms which led off a very small sitting room; as they were on the corner of the building each room was fortunate enough to have a window. Dean had put a few rugs on the floor of the sitting room, and had a sturdy table and three upright chairs there with a sconce for a lamp above them; there was also a wide wall-hanging made of tooled leather depicting a man's face shaped out of leaves, and a votary lamp on one wall that was backed by a small mirror.

Castiel saw this and went to look. "This is a Bel votary," he said, sounding surprised.

"Yeah, it was my mother's." Dean watched as the other man turned to examine the hanging. "That's Keirnys."

"Keirnys?"

"I told you my people were foresters, right? Keirnys is the god of the deep woods - he's part tree, part stag, part man. He's supposed to represent the hunter, the prey and the place that gives them both life." Dean shifted uncomfortably. "In my home village the last stag of the year to be killed is hunted, and when he's brought down he's ritually named Keirnys. Then his throat's cut and every hunter in the village is daubed with his blood, and the antlers and hide are left for the god underneath the oldest tree in the forest. Keirnys dies to ensure the good of everything living in the wood, and he lives again in the new season."

Castiel's expression was difficult to read. "A curious local custom. What did your _Gar-gello_ think of such practices?"

"No one in the village had a problem with it." Dean shrugged. "The forest is pretty huge and scary on that border, Cas. Most people believe the more gods you have on your side, the better."

"Do _you_ believe that?"

That was a little personal. Dean hesitated, disliking the question but reluctant to be rude to Castiel. He liked the guy, but he could do without the spiritual questioning, even though he accepted that it kind of came with the territory with a priest.

He opted to be blunt. "Honestly? I don't think the gods give a shit about any of us, not really. We live, we die, and anything that happens in the middle is fair game to them. I hear priests telling people that their gods love them, but I've never believed they do, or not the way _we_ love other people anyway. I think they love us the way some rich people love a lapdog - they pet us when they notice us or they kick the shit out of us when something's pissed them off, and the rest of the time they ignore us. And when we die, they shrug and find a replacement. I reckon there's more real love between me and Baby, because I look after her and care what happens to her the whole time, not just when I feel like it. And when she dies I'll miss her like hell, because nothing could take her place."

He thought Castiel would take offence at this, but to his surprise the priest merely tilted his head to one side like a curious bird.

"Then what is this for?" he asked, gesturing to the Bel sconce and wall-hanging.

Dean shrugged. "Beats the hell out of staring at a blank wall."

"But you _do_ believe in the gods?"

"Does it matter? Doesn't make any difference if they're real or some kind of mass yipweed dream from where I'm standing!" Exasperated, Dean flung out: "You want to know what's real, Cas? People. The poor bastards I have to deal with every day at the Watch House. The ones your gods don't give a damn about, who suffer every day of their lives and die without ever knowing anything different. Do you know what I was doing today, when I had to leave you to sort out the office on your own? I was over at a boarding house in Lucet Alley, where an old man had died in his lodgings. Nobody - _nobody,_ Cas - wanted to have anything to do with it because he was a grubby old man who shouted a lot. There was a temple five minutes away, but it wasn't until I turned up that they agreed to send one of their novice priests to give that poor old man his last rites, and you can bet that when the undertaker wraps him in an old sheet and puts him in a hole in the ground outside the city wall, nobody but me's gonna be there to say goodbye to him. And I don't even know his proper name. Where were _his_ gods when he died alone?"

They stared at each other for a long moment, Dean a little shocked at the way his voice had shaken when he related this incident. He hadn't thought it had upset him so much; it was hardly the first time he'd seen such things after all, and it wouldn't be the last.

"You will not be the only one there," Castiel said softly. "I will come with you and say final prayers for him."

"Yeah, well ... you're people too," Dean muttered. "Don't think we'll be seeing Bel, Astera, Cynaele or Vkanda in the Paupers' Boneyard though." This conversation really needed to be terminated, fast. He stepped around Castiel and opened one of the bedroom doors. "Here, this'll be your room. Privy's across the landing and if you want wash water you speak to Ellen - you can either have a tub in the laundry for free or she'll charge you a penny for a bowl and pitcher brought up. Or there's the public bathhouse in Beadweaver Street, that's two coppers."

Castiel went inside and looked around. Of the two bedrooms it was the larger, but it also held two narrow single beds, one on either side of the room. Each had a clothes chest at its foot and there was a hard wooden chair with arms under the window. A long narrow rug lay at the side of each bed, and there was a lamp sconce above each. Other than that, the room was surprisingly bare.

"Sam and Adam took their stuff with them when they took lodgings at the Collegia," Dean said. "Heavy hint that they didn't plan on coming back permanently, I guess. But I keep the room for when they stay over at festivals."

Without that inducement he sometimes wondered if they would come home for festivals at all. He saw Sam maybe once every ten days, but although Adam always brought his laundry back for Ellen to wash - she didn't charge nearly as much as the laundresses higher in the city - it was pure luck if Dean saw him at all. It was hard not to see this as being by design.

"I'll leave you to settle in," he said, feeling tired and discouraged, and he went to get food for Baby.

 

xXx

 

Castiel set his bags on one of the beds and considered his surroundings. He was comfortable with them; his cell at the High Temple precinct had been far smaller and plainer than this, and he thought this would be far preferable to taking other lodgings in this area. Ellen's standards seemed a little better than most; everything was clean and neat, and although there was noise from the street outside, there didn't seem to be much inside other than a dull murmur from the bar below. That was probably louder in the evenings, of course, but her licence only extended to midnight, which would curtail too much rowdiness.

He went to the window and looked out; this window overlooked the main street. Castiel was amused to see, amid the bustle and traffic, a small clump of tiny children huddled by the front wall of the building opposite. They were clutching a net bag and watching a flock of pigeons that were pecking about a few feet away. It wasn't hard to imagine what they were planning to do.

When he turned back to the bed he found Dean's cat on it, sniffing at his bags curiously.

"There's nothing in there that you'll like unless you can read," he told her good-naturedly in Jkathan. He suspected she was quite familiar with the language.

Baby chirped at him hopefully, and he gave in and scratched her head again gently. Castiel certainly hadn't expected Dean to be a cat-owner but Baby was an affectionate creature and he was beginning to think that Dean needed something of this sort, to offset the loneliness of his life that was becoming all too apparent. He got along well with his fellow Watch officers and constables, but he didn't seem to have any close friends and his brothers were conspicuous by their absence. Nor did he really seem to do anything but work. Castiel had learned a lot more about Dean from Ellen than he'd expected: she'd told him that when he wasn't working Dean was mostly sleeping; that occasionally he got drunk, but generally speaking he didn't have enough time or money to do more than have a beer; and that although there had been a number of women in his life, they were infrequent and never lasted long. There had been a rumour the previous year that he'd fathered a son on one of them, but the woman herself had strenuously denied it and certainly hadn't asked for his financial support. Which was just as well, in Ellen's opinion, because most of his spare coin went to support his brothers.

No wife or lover, a small and distant family, no close friends - just his work and a cat. Castiel wondered why Dean hadn't simply joined Valdemar's army instead of the Watch. He would surely have been better off with the rough camaraderie of a regular military unit.

"I have things to do," Castiel told the cat finally, and he began to turn out his few belongings and put them in the chest at the foot of the bed. The books he left in their pack for the time being, but he intended to study them for a while, once he'd eaten. When he finished putting his clothes away, he found that Baby had climbed into the empty leather bag and appeared to be settling down for a nap. "You are spoilt," he chided her, but he didn't try to evict her. Instead he picked the bag up by its strap and carried it out into the little sitting room.

Dean was just setting a flat, glazed terracotta dish of chopped meat on the broad window ledge there, and Baby's ears suddenly appeared over the rim of the open bag.

"I believe this is yours," Castiel told Dean, amused, and Dean made a face.

"Sorry. She climbs inside everything - boxes, sacks, cupboards. Baby, come on over here - Ellen's saved you some chicken." This was sufficient inducement for her to jump out of Castiel's bag. "She's in good with Ellen today," Dean commented, running a hand down the length of her back. "She caught a snake in the pantry. Only a small one, but everyone's excited about it because nobody's ever seen one here before."

"Where did it come from?"

"Probably out of a crate of vegetables that got delivered the other day. I had a look at the body but it wasn't a poisonous snake. Still, Ellen didn't need her staff screeching and jumping on the tables all day because they thought they saw something wriggling around the kitchen."

Castiel watched with interest as Dean shuffled about, looking awkward and indecisive; it made him look more like his true age (Ellen had confirmed Dean was just twenty-four) than the much older persona he seemed to project most of the time.

"I'm going to buy some supper and then study my books for a while," he said after a moment. "Would you care to join me? For the meal, if not the books."

A little to his surprise, Dean jumped at the chance. "Sure, why not? Ellen made chicken hot-pot today, or there's a place in Weavers Row that does real spicy stuff, almost like my grandmother used to cook."

Castiel had learned an indifference about food at the High Temple, but he got the impression that Dean wanted to get away from the Roadhouse Inn for a while, so he smiled and said, "I've a preference for spicy food myself. Let us try it by all means."

"I'm not due back on duty until the day after tomorrow," Dean told him a short while later, as they made their way through the streets. "I'm planning to head up to the Collegia and grab Adam and Sam, make them have dinner with me. Adam's been playing least-in-sight too much lately for my liking. I know he doesn't want me hanging around, but if I'm paying for his stuff then the least he can do is let me see he's alright and managing his lessons."

"That doesn't seem unreasonable," Castiel agreed mildly. He hesitated, then asked, "Your problems with him ... perhaps, rightly or wrongly, he perceived your father as being more lenient with him?"

"He kicks off at me about me not being Dad, but he knows better than to say I'm harder on him," Dean said. "Dad probably gave them both more money but he was breathing down their necks every five minutes, wanting to know what they were doing and how good their grades were. If anything, Adam's playing hooky now because he knows I can't watch him the way Dad did. Sam'll dig his nose into a book at any opportunity, but Adam's courses don't rely on bookwork so much and he slacks off when he thinks no one's paying attention."

"What are they studying?"

"Sam's taking law - he got really lucky, the Herald teaching his class noticed he had a good head for the legal stuff and pulled some strings to get him onto the dedicated courses. Mostly only highborns get to take those courses, because they cost serious money, but someone agreed to sponsor him for the first couple of years and then he won a bursary." Dean sounded justifiably proud of his brother. "Adam's studying with the Artificers - engineering. He's managed to earn bursaries too. They don't pay for everything but it means they can both live in the Collegia lodgings, instead of having to walk there and back every day. And that means they can use the libraries in the evenings and take extra classes."

"And, presumably, amuse themselves with their friends without having to ask permission or answer questions about what they're doing," Castiel noted, dryly amused.

"Yeah, that too."

"But you didn't choose to study?"

Dean shrugged. "Wasn't an option for me. Never had the smarts for it."

Castiel found this hard to believe. Having watched him wrestle with managing the Watch House, heard him quote city ordinances and the kingdom's laws without reference to the documents, and seen how he kept track of multiple cases while handling new incidents every day, all while guiding, advising and supporting the constables under him, he thought Dean was more than capable of being whatever he chose to be. But he also knew that ability and desire were not the only factors in making life choices, and all too often others - parents for example - held a disproportionate sway over the decision made.

Dean guided him through a door just off the main street that Castiel would probably have missed if he hadn't been shown it. There was nothing really there to show that this place was somewhere to eat, so clearly it wasn't intended for casual visitors to Haven, but once through the door there were bright oil lamps and many tables, and the familiar noise of people talking as they ate their meals. A teenaged boy wearing a large canvas apron intercepted them and offered them a table over by the wall, and once they were seated he gave Dean a swift verbal rundown of the day's specials. Castiel saw a large board hanging behind the bar on the other side of the room; a list of regular dishes had been painted on it. There wasn't much in the way of beef, lamb or fish – the latter seemed strange to him given that the city was built beside a wide river – but plenty of chicken, duck, pigeon, pork and rabbit. He had noticed a complete absence of dog and horse on the Valdemaran menus elsewhere, and would not have expected to find game in a common eating house like this.

"You have a preference?" Dean asked him, drawing his attention back to the server.

Castiel shook his head. "I'll have whatever you're having. But no alcohol, if you please."

Dean made a face at this, but the serving boy suggested Vakkar tea, something Castiel hadn't seen since leaving Throne City, and he accepted at once. He went back to studying his surroundings, interested by the mixed throng of people. This place was not unlike the Roadhouse Inn – far from genteel, but a reliably solid, clean place where working people could buy a decent meal without having to pledge their best spoons to the nearest pawnbroker. The floors were well-trodden wood, but clean swept, the tables and chairs were of a variety of sizes and shapes and did not match each other, the oil-lamps ranged from terracotta dish-lamps to good brass while every table sported an old bottle containing either a tallow-dip or the stump of a candle. The servers were both male and female, uniformly young and clearly related to each other, all dressed in identical canvas trousers and rough linen shirt and wearing the same canvas aprons. Castiel noted that none of these servers were presented in a way that could deliberately attract attention, quite the opposite, and although some of the customers eyed them speculatively on occasion, no one attempted to molest any of them.

"What do you think?" Dean asked. His expression was rather odd; he had clearly been trying to read Castiel's expression and looked faintly perplexed for some reason. Even a little unnerved.

It took a moment or two for Castiel to realise why that might be. Then it dawned on him; ever since the incident in the Roadhouse Inn's bar, he had been firmly shielding himself, determined not to invade Dean's mind a second time. But if Dean was a rudimentary Mindspeaker, the sudden shutdown of mental feedback from Castiel must be confusing to him, although he probably had no idea what had happened or why. Suddenly everything that he had probably been putting down to something like a good understanding of body language had been swept away. It had to be unsettling for him.

"I think the prospect of an edible meal here is high," Castiel said. Certainly the food smells were promising, with more than a hint of the spices Dean had mentioned.

"Always helps to know the good joints," Dean drawled, leaning back in his chair. The hint of puzzlement was still there in his eyes.

It was tempting, so tempting, to loosen his shields the tiniest fraction, just to ease Dean's concern. But no. That route was too dangerous. And unfair to them both. The unGifted managed their everyday lives perfectly well without the crutch of Mindspeech, and Castiel could not afford to take risks just to make the two of them feel more comfortable with each other. Dean would adjust, just as he presumably adjusted to being unable to hear those well-shielded Heralds.

"Do you eat here often?" he asked, trying to make casual conversation. It wasn't one of his greater talents and he hadn't realised until now just how much easier having that faint mental connection to Dean had made it.

"Often? No. I don't eat in any one place regularly," Dean replied. "Too risky. People see you as a regular, they start doing you little favours in the hope of getting something back sometime. I don't mean Ellen, she was a Watch Constable herself once and she knows the score, but other places, even real honest places like this one, there's always something they see as being helpful, you know? So you don't put yourself in that position. And it's a risk in other ways too. I don't want to be seen here too regular in case someone decides to even the score with me sometime. I don't make myself too easy to be found."

Castiel frowned. "Has that ever happened?"

"Sure. A guy I tapped a couple of months ago for running a protection racket, he got three years hard labour. So a couple of his brothers came after me. One of them decided to put the frighteners on Ellen, and that was just his first mistake."

Castiel thought about Ellen's steely gaze and the hard line of her jaw, not to mention the muscle he had seen in her forearms. Then he thought of Jo who, for all she looked like a whip-thin willow branch, had been happily throwing her colleagues around the training yard earlier that day. He began to grin.

"What did Ellen do to him?"

"Better ask what they _all_ did to him, Cas. Podina might act like a scared rabbit around me when I'm naked, but she totes barrels of hot water and wrings wet blankets for a living. You do not want to get up close and personal with her washboard when she's pissed off. Not to mention what Anaelia can do with a rolling pin, or Tamar with a mop, and Ellen keeps her old Bully behind the bar. By the time we got there, the guy was trussed up in a clothes line and snivelling like a baby."

"And the other brother?"

"Olivia and Jed caught him sneaking around the Watch House. He wasn't ever too bright, though. And now all three of them are keeping each other company while they dig ditches for the Crown. Always good to see wasters doing a little honest labour for a change."

Castiel smiled. "You and your people do good work."

"There's always plenty of it, that's for sure." Dean shuffled the salt cellar around restlessly. "So, is there a lot of call for people in your line of work?"

" _Han'garuyim?_ No, quite the contrary. There's so little demand for us now that it seems likely I'll be the last to receive the traditional training in exorcism."

"Seriously?"

He shrugged. "People would rather hire mages. And it's true that a skilled mage may have more immediate success than someone of my calling, but – and this is my personal viewpoint, you understand – I feel the dismissal of my skills is short-sighted and risky. The biggest risk associated with mages is that in order to understand how to banish an Abyssal creature, they must first understand how it is summoned."

"Not good," Dean commented, "if a demon can only be summoned by a mage in the first place. "

"Well … they can also cross over by divine intervention, it must be said, but that's much rarer."

"We'd _hope_."

"So first a mage must be taught how to summon such creatures. In an ideal world they'll have already been taught the ethics of the business and therefore be resistant to the idea of summoning Abyssal Plane creatures.   And in fairness most schools of magic provide excellent ethics training." Castiel shrugged ruefully. "Unfortunately, even the best of the schools aren't proof against a corrupt alumnus. Indeed, mostly it's not corruption that moves the mage to take the false step, but ambition or overconfidence. The commonest error is usually committed by someone attempting to cut corners by summoning a lesser creature to do their bidding. It can't be emphasised enough how canny and rapacious the _garuyim_ are in such matters. And of course, once one has crossed over the trouble begins. Very often the summoning mage is far from equal to the threat and becomes the first victim."

"Are _you_ equal to the threat?" Dean asked softly.

Castiel was neither surprised nor offended by the question. "I am, I assure you. I've been sworn to my goddess's service, which has set a permanent circle of divine protection around me, and I've received the best training there is." He saw the look of reluctant doubt in Dean's eyes. "The methods we use to exorcise such creatures can even be taught to non-priests. That we don't do so is only because of the increased risk in making the attempt."

"If it's that easy - "

"I didn't say it was easy," Castiel corrected Dean swiftly, "only that it can be done."

Their server returned with a large tray before Dean could respond to this, and the conversation was abandoned in favour of sampling the flavour of their meal. Dean had ordered duck legs stewed in a dark, sticky gravy and laid on a bed of steamed and translucent pale green grain. Two side dishes held steamed vegetables and the small wheat flour dumplings that were a staple part of Jkathan cuisine, eaten by everyone from the king to the lowliest farmhand. Steaming was a very common form of cooking in Jkatha; stewing less so, which argued that the main dish was a northern variant, perhaps of the smoked duck and rice that was sold from carts on street corners in the Throne City. A cautious sampling of the sticky sauce confirmed this; the smoky flavour was there but it was sweeter and less pungent, and the meat was moist and succulent. The grain had a firmer texture than rice, and the dumplings were spicy rather than plain; the vegetables were seasonal northern varieties, also spiced. The curious mixture of the familiar with the unfamiliar kept Castiel occupied for several minutes, until Dean finally nudged his toe under the table to get his attention.

"Good?"

Castiel swallowed hastily. "Yes, very much so."

"Duck in Pot-Sauce. My grandmother used to make it with rabbit, but people here prefer their rabbit pan-fried or roasted. Go figure."

"What is the grain?"

"Roadside Peas - they grow just about anywhere. Cheapest kind of dried bean you can buy, to be honest, and some people even call it 'poor man's corn'. You can boil it to make porridge."

A less expensive meal than it seemed, then. Castiel was intrigued; a lentil that would receive favourable attention from his father's expensive cook was used to feed the poorest in Haven. "And the duck - from the river?"

"Probably, although they're farmed as well. Farmed duck is more expensive - force-fed to fatten the liver." Dean gestured to the menu board with his spoon. "Pigeons are really cheap, there are dovecotes everywhere - "

"Or one can catch them in the street, as I saw some children doing earlier."

Dean grinned at this. "Rabbits are expensive in the city, though. They have to be kept in hutches or crates and fed all the time. Pigs less so - they need more room, but they'll eat almost anything."

"And beef and lamb must be farmed. I see. But why no fish?"

"Local ordinances in this part of Haven. Fish from higher up the river is safe to eat, but this far down there's too much rubbish being thrown into the river, and then there's the drains emptying into it, and sewers. You eat the fish down here, you'll get sick pretty quick. People still do it, though, and sometimes we'll end up with an epidemic in the slums because they caught some kind of flux and passed it on to everyone around them." Dean's jaw hardened for a moment. "There was a bad one the year I joined the Watch. Lotta folk died - kids, mostly, and old people."

"It's the same everywhere," Castiel told him, as gently as he dared. "You can't change things so that all people have enough wholesome food that they don't need to take risks like that. Would that it were possible but - "

"There are some folk who could give a little more and not miss it," Dean retorted. "Temples too. You should see some of the decorations in the temples near the palace!"

"True," Castiel said peaceably. "I've never agreed with the adornment of religious buildings while the congregations go hungry. The gods don't require it, after all. Gold and gems are of little interest to them, by and large."

Dean subsided, poking at the remains of his meal with his spoon. "Sorry," he muttered after a moment. "Guess I'm being rude, but ..."

"You say nothing I'm not in agreement with, and you feel passionately about it. Would that others felt as you do in these matters." Castiel started to take another mouthful, but stopped as another thought occurred to him. "That said - there can be much beauty in simpler decoration, and the soul must be fed as well as the stomach. If the poorest of the faithful can find something in their temple to please the eye and lift the spirits, then such decoration isn't wasteful. Don't you think?"

Dean's lips curved up in a reluctant smile. "I think you've got a damn clever tongue."

"Not always, I assure you," he replied good-naturedly. "The good meal has inspired me."

That won him a laugh, just as he'd hoped it would.

 

xXx

 

"That is one ugly fucker," Dean said bluntly, staring at the detailed line drawing in the book Castiel was showing him. "Why in nine hells don't people get the heebie-jeebies when these things turn up? Its face is practically screaming _I'm gonna kill you, suckers!_ Not gonna lie, Cas - I'd be hitting that with everything I had as soon as I saw it."

Castiel shrugged. "Remember, this is its true face, which few people will ever see. The mage who summons it will either be prepared or ... most likely dead soon after. They don't retain their true faces for long on this plane of existence. The nun who drew this was divinely granted a particular Gift, the ability to see visions of the true face of evil in all its forms. Creating these demonaries was her life's work and they weren't meant for the casual scholar to peruse." He glanced up at Dean. "You're one of less than a score of people ever to see these images and I wouldn't have shown you under other circumstances, Dean. These books are forbidden to mages and anyone whose life isn't dedicated to the pursuit and elimination of the unclean beings from the Abyss."

"I'm not planning to spend the rest of my life doing this, Cas," Dean said. The idea appalled him. His everyday life was bad enough.

"No, of course not. But you're dedicated to finding one particular _garuya_ , yes? I've no intention of showing you any of the other demons, only those listed that have an affinity for fire."

Castiel was handing the books with lengths of raw silk wrapped around his hands, and he used a long wooden pin with a fine fork at the tip to turn the pages, proceedings which Dean watched uneasily. He wondered if this was because the images themselves were somehow dangerous, then wished that idea hadn't occurred to him.

"These books are quite old," the priest commented, as though he overheard the thought, "and they're not original copies. A temple mage created a number of copies long before I took holy orders. Unfortunately, because of the subject matter certain precautions had to be taken with the magic he used, and I discovered that its residue gives me a rash if I touch the pages with bare hands. Most people are unaffected."

Dean relaxed. "Seriously? Man, that sucks." Then he snorted a little. "And alright - I'll admit I wondered if maybe you just didn't want to touch the pictures or something."

"That's not a foolish thought, Dean. Even the image has a certain amount of power if the one looking upon it allows it to. There's a meditation I can teach you so that you won't dream of it."

And wasn't that just a lovely idea? It hadn't occurred to Dean that he might have nightmares about the demon, probably because he already had enough _other_ nightmares to contend with. Awesome.

"If it doesn't keep its real face, what use is this really?" he asked after a moment or two.

"Because its true face will always be just beneath the surface, even if it has taken a human body," Castiel replied. "If you know you're looking at it, and you can keep the image of its true face in your mind, it won't be able to hide itself so easily. Its true visage will begin to show through, whether it wishes it to or not. And then it can be exorcised."

He turned several pages, skipping over a number of colour plates that Dean frankly refused to look at, then stopped briefly at another nightmarish image before moving on once again. Several plates later, Dean suddenly stopped him.

"What's that?"

Castiel studied the notes. "A lesser fire _garuya_ \- and its true name contains the syllable _Az_. I'll add it to the list of possibilities. But why do you ask?"

Dean stared at the creature's barred yellow eyes, the uncomfortable memory of his father's rantings about yellow-eyed demons suddenly and unpleasantly at the front of his mind. And for a brief moment another wisp of a memory stirred, of heat and smoke and screams. Then it was gone again.

"I don't know," he lied, and he thrust the image of his father's face to the back of his mind again. Jon had only seen demons when he was intoxicated, after all. "No reason, I guess. Look Cas, I'm really tired - mind if I leave you to it?"

"Of course not," Castiel said at once, and he slipped a marker into the book before he closed it. "Tomorrow, before I go to the Watch House, I've an invitation to meet with a scholar at a school in Ribbon Street. Do you know of this place?"

"Sure, it's pretty respectable. The kids of the Street Merchants' Guild go there, mostly."

Castiel nodded, satisfied. "So far I've had little success with the few scholars I've been able to meet. I'm not expecting great things from this man either, but I believe he may be able to introduce me to others who'll be more useful in my search. I have their names already, but they're more likely to be of assistance if I'm introduced by someone they know."

"Alright. I'll probably see you in the evening then." The long day was catching up with Dean and he stifled a yawn. "G'night, Cas."

"Good night, Dean. Sleep well."

Dean could feel Castiel's eyes on him as he crossed to his own room, but for some reason the watchful regard wasn't creepy but comforting. It had been a while since anyone but Baby had shared these rooms with him; having the human company was nice.

_Don't get attached_ , he reminded himself sharply, as he stripped off his clothes and fell into bed. _He won't be here forever._

 

xXx

 

That night, Dean dreamt of fire.

It wasn't a new dream; it would be more accurate to call it a memory, although he never remembered it in this clarity when he was awake.

In the dream, his mother was alive again and he was back in the house of his earliest childhood, the one built of logs that was on the edge of the village at Dell's Crossing. She was tucking him into his bed – that was his last clear memory of her, her long silken blonde hair falling over his face a little as she bent to kiss his forehead. He could smell the scent of sweet spices that always seemed to cling to her.

Then she was gone and the room was dark, and the smell of smoke coiled through the air. And his father was dragging him out of his bed, thrusting the heavy bundle that was his little brother, Sam, into his arms and telling him urgently, _Dean, take your brother and RUN -_

And then they were outside in the grassy clearing that surrounded the house, and Sam was screaming, and flames were roaring through the house, lighting up the empty windows. And Jon was stumbling from the house, but …

When he was awake Dean didn't remember calling for his mother, who never made it out of the building. But in his dreams he screamed for her until he was hoarse, staring up at the inferno that was his family home and watching as the roof collapsed, feeling his father's restraining arm around him as he fought to try and go back inside to look for her.

He usually tried to hang onto this moment when he woke up, because this was the last loving touch he could remember his father giving him, the last parental embrace of his childhood. But this time the dream had a final twist.

As he turned to look up at Jon from his child's perspective, expecting to see the face of haunted devastation from a thousand dreams before, instead for the first time Jon was staring back at him. And he wasn't devastated at all. He was smiling.

And his eyes were the barred yellow goat's eyes of the demon in Castiel's book.

Dean screamed, and felt someone grabbing his shoulders, jerking him around.

Castiel stood there with him in the clearing, thick smoke from the burning house swirling around him. His blue eyes were almost luminous in the weird light thrown by the flames, and when he saw he had Dean's attention he shook him hard, just once.

_Dean – wake up!_

Castiel? But –

_WAKE UP!_

 

xXx

 

Dean came awake with a painful jolt, still smelling the acrid smoke of the fire and hearing Castiel's voice ringing in his ears. He was sitting up and swinging his legs over the side of his bed before he was fully aware of what he was doing; he more than half expected to find Castiel in the room with him.

But there was only Baby curled up on the windowsill, undisturbed, and although weak daylight was already filtering through the shutters at his window, there was little noise to be heard through the Roadhouse Inn apart from the tiny clatter made as Ellen's second hired hand, Tamar, went about her dawn routine of starting the kitchen fires and opening the shutters.

It took longer to steady his breathing and feel his pulse slowing than Dean really liked, and by the time he was fully calm most of the dream had already fled beyond recall. This was nothing unusual – the _dream_ was nothing unusual – but this was the first time it had warped to include things that had not actually happened. He swallowed at the thought of the yellow eyes set in his father's face. What the hell! Why would he dream something like that? Dean had plenty of issues with his father, but conflating him with a demon was a whole new level of screwed up. The yellow-eyed-demon thing was just a coincidence.

And Castiel … why would he dream of Castiel being there? Of Castiel shaking him awake?

Did he really visualise Castiel as somehow being some kind of saviour to him like that? Because if he did …

Dean groaned, burying his head in his hands for a moment.

No, it was only a dream. A screwed up, twisted, grotesque kind of dream, but just a dream.

For several moments he considered lying back and trying to get some more sleep. But he had a lot to do that day and he couldn't risk sleeping in, so he got up and dragged yesterday's clothes on. It was far too early to get a tub of water in the laundry, but the bathhouse opened at dawn to serve the night workers and a soak in the hot baths followed by a dip in the frigidarium would hopefully wake him up and sort out his head.

When he stepped out of his room softly, holding his boots in one hand, Castiel's door was still shut and Dean crossed the room as quietly as possible, grateful that he didn't seem to have done anything to wake his new roommate.

 

xXx

 

Unbeknown to him, behind the closed door Castiel knelt on the rug beside his bed, legs folded beneath him and hands clasped in his lap in the usual posture for prayer. He was not praying. His blue eyes tracked Dean across the sitting room and out of the door as though the walls weren't there, and his head still rang with the younger man's interrupted screams.


	3. Chapter 3

Someone higher up the social scale might have taken one look at the weather that day and either opted to take a closed sedan chair to their destination (if their business was unavoidable) or stayed at home. As the City Guard would put it, it was raining spears and arrows, but people in the lower city didn't often have much choice about working through terrible weather, and although it would be a stretch to say that Dean didn't actually notice it, he merely muttered a cynical admonition to the gods and hitched his hood more closely about his head as he set off.

He did notice how high the river was running when he passed it at one point, but that was a professional concern. The Terilee had only burst its banks once in all the time Dean had lived in Haven, but only a fool would assume it couldn't happen again and he made a mental note to look up the relevant ordinances when he was back on duty, just in case. Flooding was unlikely to be a problem in his sector – although there was always an associated risk from the drains backing up – but it would cause misery along the docks and in the slums down by Exiles Gate, and the latter was his 'uncle' Bobby's sector still. He made a second mental note to check in with Bobby sometime soon, and that reminded him of something else he meant to do while he was making his way through the city.

Checking in with the Watch Houses as he passed through their areas was only a courtesy, and most of them knew him on sight these days as he visited Adam and Sam with reasonable regularity. Usually all Dean did was nod a greeting to the constable on the front desk, so that he or she would mention he was around to their own captain; he didn't generally have enough time for more than that. This morning, however, he made an exception at the Watch House in Glassblower Alley, little though he really wanted to; he had a chancy history with the captain there.

"Captain Talbot about, Constable?" he asked.

"She's in her office, Sir," the young man said. "She's on her own, if you want to go through." He was smart and suitably deferential, but Dean wouldn't have expected anything else in this Watch House.

"Thanks." Bracing himself inwardly, Dean tapped politely on the office door and opened it. "Heyla, Bela. Got two minutes?"

"Well, well, Dean Winchester as I live and breathe." Bela Talbot, captain of the Glassblower Watch, set her reed pen aside and sat back, regarding him with her usual little amused smile. "Two minutes? I'm sure I can manage a little longer than that. Come on in."

Well aware that she knew he neither liked nor trusted her, Dean gave her a patently false smile and perched on the edge of the clerk's desk opposite her. Although she was at present alone in the room, the clerk's desk was clearly in use. The Glassblower Watch was slightly smaller in terms of manpower than Ropewalk Watch, but they had a clerk. Not that Dean was particularly surprised, but it itched at him nonetheless; Bela was well known to be a woman with contacts. A little older than Dean, she was a very rare creature - a career Watch Officer, someone who had joined the Watch with the actual intention of scaling the command ladder. For the life of him, Dean couldn't work out _why_ though, since he couldn't think of a single officer at District Command who had started out in a Watch House. The usual route to commanding the Watch was via the City Guard or the Royal Valdemaran Guard, also known as the army; it was usually seen as a respectable retirement post for someone who was good but hadn't quite made it in the Guard's command structure.

What he knew of her from their shared basic training led Dean to believe she must have an angle of some sort that she was working, and probably not one that involved ending her days as the Watch's most senior commander. He also knew, instinctively, that whatever or whoever it was she was aiming for, he wanted no part of it. Luckily, someone like himself was of limited use to someone like Bela Talbot.

"So," Bela said after a moment of scrutinising him, "how's life in the Strangers' Quarter?"

Dean shrugged. "Strange." He glanced at the office window which overlooked the river, although admittedly from some distance away. "River's rising, and the rain don't look like stopping."

"Yes ... rumour has it that the weather-wise are forecasting floods." Bela raised one eyebrow at him. "I'm not sure how much credence I give that, since the truly weather-wise are few and far between, and almost all of them are currently riding their pretty white horsies around the wilder reaches of the kingdom. Still, we've posted a watch on the riverbanks, just in case. Wouldn't want to be caught out." A pause. "Not that flooding is likely to be much of an issue for _you_."

Dean was of the mind that it would be an issue for any right-minded Watch officer, regardless of whether it affected him personally or not, but he knew Bela didn't see it that way and didn't bother to say it. Better just to come to the point.

"Funny how the rain doesn't make much difference to a really good fire, huh?" he said.

Her other eyebrow went up. "As you say. I heard about the temple fire," she said in a more open tone, and the amusement left her face. "Ugly business. Do you have any leads?"

Dean waggled his hand in the air. "Nothing solid so far. Looks like it might be a serial arsonist, though - we had three other fires, smaller stuff, no deaths or significant loss. Nothing obvious linking them, but my gut's saying it's the same person. You had anything similar?"

"No ... but you might want to ask Claeton at the Wrights-and-Smiths Watch. I'm pretty sure I recall one of my people saying there was a couple of suspicious fires in his sector."

The Wrights-and-Smiths Watch bordered the Palace and Collegia sector, with a small amount of overlap given that the Palace and Collegia didn't have a Watch of their own - the complex was managed by the Palace Guard. Both areas had heavy student and trainee populations, of course, not to mention the wealthy residential zones bordering the Palace complex. A familiar gnawing anxiety set up home in the pit of Dean's stomach then. He had two brothers lodging in the Wrights-and-Smiths sector who were studying with the Collegia.

He kept his face smooth, however. However genuine the tip might be, he wasn't about to let Bela know how worried he was becoming. He put her somewhere on the same scale that he ranked Guardsman Pyote on; and while, of the two of them, Bela might be fractionally more trustworthy, Dean would choose to deal with Pyote over her any day. Pyote was a straightforward proposition. With Bela there was always a twist, and always a price to pay.

"Thanks; I'll stop off there if I have time," Dean said, nodding to her, and he got up to go.

"I hear you're the lucky recipient of a priestly visitation," Bela remarked before he could reach the door.

Of course she knew about Castiel. Dean wondered if she also knew what the priest was.

"Convenient." Her bright, amused eyes were watching him sharply.

"Not sure _convenient_ is the word I'd use for turning up just in time to bury three members of his Order," Dean said dryly.

Bela held up a copy of Murgo's flyer. The naggingly familiar but elusive face of Castiel's brother stared back at Dean for a moment. "Want me to tell you all about him?"

He did, but he wasn't about to pay her prices. Castiel might conceivably be Bela's match, though. "I'll tell _Gar_ Castiel to come see you."

"Oh, I've already met him, albeit in passing. He certainly gets around the city … meeting the most unexpected people too. I wonder if his Ambassador knows the company he's keeping?"

Dean stared at her. "Guess he must be making the most of the opportunity," he said. "He's supposed to be some kind of scholar."

"He's no such thing, and you know it," Bela retorted. "Should I be concerned that you've started hobnobbing with a outkingdom exorcist? - oh, don't look like that, Dean! Your secrets are safe with me, you know."

"Bela, if you've got something on the guy, lay it out for me," Dean told her curtly. They stared at each other challengingly for a long space, but Bela was silent. He nodded, his lip curling. "Yeah, that's what I thought. As for what you've got on me – " He snorted sourly. "Tell and be damned, if you think it's worth your time." He turned away and reached for the doorknob.

"Keep tempting me and one of these days I might just do that."

Dean thought of Guardsman Pyote and the District Commander. "You'll have to get in line," he told her. "See you around, Bela."

 

xXx

 

Someone was poking his shoulder. Sam Winchester grumbled and hitched the blankets higher, and when that didn't discourage his tormentor he dragged the pillow over his head too.

The same someone grabbed the edge of the blankets and uncovered one ear.

"If you don't get up now, you might as well not bother," her voice chirruped annoyingly into it.

"Suits me," he mumbled and he tried to reclaim the blanket, to no avail.

"I thought you said it's your brother's rest-day today. He'll be here before you know it, if you don't get up."

Sam groaned. "Since when do you know my brother's coming here?" he complained, sitting up slowly.

Jess put her hands on her hips and rolled her eyes at him. "Since he _always_ visits when he has a rest-day. When are you going to introduce us?"

"When I can be sure he won't hit on you." That was a little unfair; Sam was pretty sure that even if Dean did flirt with Jess - because Dean flirted with every pretty woman he met - it would just be to tease him, not a serious attempt to steal her. Besides, he knew Jess would quickly set Dean right in a way no one could mistake. It was more a case of Sam introducing them when he felt sure he and Jess were a fixed thing, and from the look on her face she knew and wasn't impressed with his line of thinking.

But "Get up!" was all she said. "I have a class in half a candlemark," she added, grabbing her cloak and a bag of books and papers from the window ledge. "If he's still here at suppertime, I expect to be introduced."

"We've got to find Adam and drag him out with us," Sam said, swinging his legs out of bed. He frowned. "He's been avoiding both of us lately, not just Dean." Which was not good; however much Adam kicked against Dean's authority, he was still a minor and Dean's legal responsibility. Dean accepted his attitude with mild resignation, but only because Sam was at the Collegia and had promised to keep an eye on their younger brother for him. Sam was uneasily aware that he had not been as careful about this as he should lately, and Adam had taken advantage.

The worst part was that he knew Dean wouldn't blame him if anything went wrong. Dean shouldered all the responsibility for the family and took all the blame to himself. Sam had watched it happen with their father, first with the addictions and weird behaviour, then with his eventual, inevitable death. And Adam - a very angry teenager - was only too happy to reinforce the idea, but Sam had seen and heard too much when they were younger to allow him to get away with that. What he had witnessed was bad enough; he had an unpleasant feeling that there was more and worse lurking under the surface of Dean's determinedly cheery facade that was entirely unknown to his siblings.

And for that reason alone, Sam refused to burden Dean with his own problems. Unlike Adam, he was counted an adult and responsible for his own messes; Dean had enough on his plate. It was just a pity that Adam could never be brought to see that.

"Adam needs to grow up," Jess said flatly, echoing his thoughts uncannily. Sam sometimes wondered if she was a Mindspeaker, although he'd asked her once and she'd sworn that everyone in her family was headblind. "He wants all the fun of being an adult, but none of the responsibilities. You realise he's probably running up debts? He's been seen hanging out with a bunch of the older Artificer-trainees, the ones with a bit of money who like to party."

"Great," Sam sighed, and he rubbed his face with both hands. "At least that gives me an idea where to look for him."

"Well, good luck with that." Jess leaned over to kiss him, then sighed a little and patted his cheek. "You look exhausted - didn't you sleep properly? I know you were dreaming about something."

Sam grimaced. He'd forgotten that ... for the moment anyway. "It's nothing," he lied. "Just worrying about the mid-term exams."

"Don't let Dean keep you out too late," she advised.

"He won't, Jess, his schedule is worse than mine. If he can drag himself right across the city to see me on his day off, then I can make an effort too." He reached for his breeches. "Besides, it was my idea to track Adam down. Even Ellen says he's been avoiding Dean - that's more than just being a brat."

"Someday you're going to introduce me to Ellen too," Jess commented wryly. "See you later!" She blew him a kiss and was gone.

As soon as she was gone, Sam fell back against his pillows again. He glanced sideways out of the window and grimaced at the pouring rain that lashed the windows and spilled out of the overburdened roof gutters. For a moment he cravenly wished that Dean would use the rain as an excuse not to drag himself halfway across the city, but Sam knew him too well for that. For some reason family meant the world to his older brother; why, he couldn't imagine. Jon and Adam certainly hadn't given him many reasons. In fact, the biggest mystery of their shared history was why, after Dean ran away from home at sixteen (did he really run away or had Jon thrown him out? Sam wasn't sure) and joined the Guard, Jon had thrown a fit and dragged him home again when he found out. Sam had been barely ten at the time. Echoes of the fight that followed still erupted out of his memory at odd moments to disconcert and upset him.

There were so many things in their shared history that Sam found upsetting, but Dean always smiled and waved it all off. They were family, he said, and family stuck together, no matter what. Sam wasn't sure he agreed with that entirely, but they were responsible for Adam until he reached his majority and in that at least he could do his best to help Dean. Even if his own problems were threatening to choke him.

For a moment Sam squeezed his eyes shut, but that made it too easy for his dreams to rear up and torment him again. Why he dreamed last night about the house at Dell's Crossing he couldn't imagine - he didn't even know how he knew it was Dell's Crossing. He'd been far too young when they left there. All the things Dean told him - a rare event indeed, but occasionally he talked - about their mother and grandparents and the great border forest, and the wooden house on the edge of the village, were just stories to Sam and Adam. But there was the house, the roaring flames, the six year old Dean carrying a baby wrapped in blankets, the choking smoke and their father staggering out of the building with burns on his hands and arms where he had tried to save Mary and failed.

_Why do I dream about this fire, which I can't possibly remember, and not the fire that killed Kate?_ he wondered.

Except that sometimes he _did_ dream about that fire too, but in a cloudier way, more a memory of heat and smoke and screams, and Dean was never in it. Sam had asked Dean about that once, and Dean had simply said "I wasn't there" before changing the subject. The smell of bitter smoke would still catch Sam by surprise sometimes.

He never asked Dean about Jon's role in both sets of events. That subject was forbidden between them. And consequently he couldn't now ask why, when he dreamed about the fires, he always dreamed that his father had yellow eyes. He could guess and that was terrifying enough.

 

xXx

 

Dean arrived just before noon. Even without the need to stop at every Watch House on the way, the walk through the city was a long one; partly due to traffic but also because there wasn't a direct route through Haven to the Palace and Collegia. It would be stretching things a little to say that the city had been designed to be a maze of streets and progressive layers of walls with guards upon them, but the layout was far less random than a stranger might suppose and purposely designed to prevent a would-be invader penetrating at anything faster than a frustrating crawl. This was of course quite inconvenient to everyday travellers as well, and even to those whose knowledge of the streets and alleys was encyclopaedic, but you learned to accept and get over that if you stayed in the city for any length of time.

By the time he reached the Collegium boarding house Sam lodged in Dean was soaked, despite wearing his heaviest wet weather gear. Fortunately, Sam and his landlady were waiting for him, having expected something like this. He was efficiently stripped of his outer garments and boots, and given first a towel and then a mug of hot spicy tea, while his gear was hung up to dry and Sam dug out some of his own spare clothes. Luckily Sam and Dean were much of a size, although Dean was acutely aware of Sam's growing height and bulk; he was far from short himself but he was built on narrower lines, and it was already clear that Sam would soon be much taller and stocky like their father besides. Most Unaffiliated students wore a dusty blue uniform, but the law students had a little more leeway, so Dean at least wasn't left looking like "an overgrown bookworm" as he put it.

"Thanks," Dean said, to the landlady, handing back the towel and empty mug. "If this rain doesn't give up soon, the river's going to burst its banks. Are you on safe ground here? Are the drains are good?"

"Let's put it this way," she said briskly. "If the drains here _aren't_ good, the people responsible will suffer with the rest of us, and afterwards they won't have anywhere to hide."

Of course. This was right next to the palace complex, and within sneezing distance of embassies, high temples, and the very, very rich. Plus the Artificers were right here, at ground zero. This was the one place in the city where the drains had damn well better _not_ go wrong.

"Awesome." Dean gave her a wry smile, which she mirrored, knowing what he was thinking. Sam's landlady was an ex-Guard who went by the name of Tula Redaxe (although Dean was fairly sure that the 'Redaxe' part wasn't the name she had been born with). She was a tough but fair woman in her early fifties; nothing fazed her and she took no crap from anyone; just the kind of person needed in a position like this. The Collegia organised themselves a little differently to other teaching institutions in the capital; the Heraldic, Healer and Bardic trainees were all housed within the Collegia buildings of course, but Unaffiliated students had to live elsewhere and the rule was that if they weren't living with family they had to live in approved lodgings with a landlady or landlord who was employed by the Collegia to keep an eye on them – something Dean was grateful for, especially in Adam's case.

"There's an open storm drain running right under my window," Sam was saying wryly. "Gets kind of noisy sometimes."

"Be grateful," Tula told him with grim good humour. "It used to be covered, until it burst during a storm and flooded us out. There's less pressure on it this way, or so they tell me. The people housed over the culvert at the bottom of the street get a lot more noise."

"It's not the water that makes the noise - it's people building rafts and riding them through the drains during bad weather."

"Report 'em to the Watch," Dean said, exasperated. "Rafts - are you kidding me? Are they crazy? Those drains must be full of rubbish and shit!"

"Never said it was a good idea," Sam said, grinning.

"Murgo's right - the whole damn city's full of weirdoes," Dean said, shaking his head.

"The good thing is, you know it and can plan for it," Tula told him. "Now - seeing as you only just got dry and the rain don't look like stopping, why don't you two eat here? There's a new pot of chicken soup and a fresh loaf."

Dean hesitated, for going out again wasn't appealing, but: "We have to track down Adam. Ellen says he snuck past _her_ to get that last lot of laundry, and that's taking his shit too far."

"She does go on a bit," Sam said reluctantly. "She bends _my_ ear every time I go back, so I hate to think what she's saying to him. You know Ellen doesn't hold back."

Yeah, Dean knew. He'd even asked her not to (he knew better than to _tell_ her), but she was a law unto herself under her own roof, as she'd told him in no uncertain terms more than once. He fumed for a moment or two, then sagged with a sigh.

"Chicken soup sounds great," he admitted.

"Come into the kitchen," Tula told them.

This wasn't like Ellen's Roadhouse. The kitchen wasn't much larger than one attached to an ordinary domestic dwelling, but it didn't need to be as the students were largely responsible for feeding themselves, unless they were sick. Dean was grateful to Tula, who was essentially inviting them into her own home, and praised what was indeed a truly worthy addition to the annals of chicken soup legend. Better still was the offer of pear and apple pie afterwards. Dean had a weakness for pie.

"Where do you put all that stuff?" Sam asked him, amused. "You eat like a warhorse, but I never see you get any bigger."

"More to the point, why aren't _you_ packing it away?" Dean demanded. Most unusually, Sam was only really toying with his portion. "Tula lavished love and attention on that pie, moose, the least you can do is show it proper respect."

"I ate heavy last night, alright? Here, you can have mine if you like - I know you're only looking for an excuse to ask for seconds." Sam pushed his plate over, and Dean wasn't inclined to argue over it.

"Talk to me about Adam," he said around a mouthful, pointing his spoon at his brother. "What's going on with him?"

"I wish I knew - he's avoiding me too. Someone told me this morning that he's been seen hanging around with some older Blues, ones with money – "

"Highborns?" Dean asked sharply.

"No … I don't think so. There are a lot of merchant kids taking Artificer classes."

Dean snorted. "Not sure that's any better. At least with highborns you can be pretty sure Daddy doesn't want a scandal."

Sam looked uneasy at this. "Dean, he might not be up to anything. Maybe he just wants to … I don't know …"

"Cut loose from the family and pretend we don't exist?" Dean raised his eyebrows at Sam's uncomfortable expression. "Sorry, should I amend that? 'Cut loose from his family and get shot of Dean', maybe? Don't look like that, Sammy, I'm not stupid – I know how he feels about me. Ain't never been any kind of surprise that he feels that way either, but if Adam wants to keep studying here, he's gotta deal with me, especially seeing as I'm bankrolling him. Like it or not, I'm his legal guardian for the next two years and I can call time on his studies any time I like. The Collegia won't let him stay here if he doesn't have my permission."

"Just as well too," Tula commented, whisking Dean's empty plate away before he could even think about licking it. "We'd be up to our eyeballs in runaway kids if we didn't have _that_ rule in place. It's one thing to have a Gift or be Chosen, but we don't have enough classroom space right now for all the talented kids who genuinely _want_ to study. We don't need a bunch who fell out with Dad and think this is an easy option next to learning in the forge at home. We've already got enough lazy highborns warming seats and getting into trouble."

Dean grinned up at her. "The voice of experience?"

She gave him a grim smile. "You have no idea, Captain. Or maybe you _do_ – I'll bet you see a few even in the lower city."

"I was telling our new scribe all about 'em only the other day."

"You have a new scribe?" Sam asked, surprised. "Did they let you have Ash back after all?"

"Nah, it's nothing official. You remember that Bel priest who turned up just after the temple got fired? He's offered to help out for free while we try and get word on his missing brother."

"Is that allowed?"

Dean grimaced. "Probably not, but Jody and Henryks put up some good arguments, and I gotta admit – it's a huge help."

Sam was rubbing a knot in the old kitchen table with his finger, studying it with a furrowed brow. "I guess they're really not going to replace that temple then?"

"No reason to," Dean replied. "They had a regular congregation of like – _five_. There's just no point."

There was a pause, then Tula asked quietly, "Do you have any idea who did it yet?"

"I'm chasing a few lines of enquiry," Dean said cautiously. "The most likely is that some kids did it, since there were a couple of other arson incidents at the same time, but … I'm really hoping it wasn't. Some people deserve to hang, and I'm not saying there can't be truly evil kids out there, but mostly they're just messed up and desperate and no one deserves to die for that."

"You've got Herald Asrel working the city courts in your sector," the landlady commented. "She's very fair."

"Yeah, that's something." Dean didn't mention the obvious; that only a small proportion of crimes made it to a Herald Court, and that some of the other city judges were sentence-happy bastards who cared little or nothing for the fate of the lowborn miscreants who came before their benches. "On the upside, I've got a few ideas I'm working on and I got a possible tip from another Watch House on the way here. " He looked at Sam. "If we can get a hold of Adam and have a straight conversation with him for five minutes, you two might be able to help me out. Could be there's a student connection."

Sam's eyes were wide. "What – seriously? What kind of connection?"

"All the places that got fired – 'cept for the temple – were used by students. I'm thinking maybe it's someone with a grudge."

"Rain looks like it's easing off," Tula advised them, nodding to the window. "Maybe now's a good time to go take a look for him."

"Yeah, let's do it." Dean got up. "Thanks for the meal, Tula – you make great soup and really _amazing_ pie. Remind me to marry you when I retire."

She snorted, amused. ""You couldn't keep up with me, Winchester! Now get out of here. Oh hey, honey, how are you feeling?"

A girl, younger than Sam, had appeared in the kitchen doorway, wrapped in a colourful blanket. Her red nose and watery eyes declared her problem.

"You come on in and have some chicken soup," Tula told her. "Ignore these louts, they're just leaving … Oh, and Sam?"

He looked around.

"This is the last time I remind you about overnight guests," Tula told him sternly. "You tell Jessica, the next time I catch her sneaking out I'll be talking to the dean and he'll take it to Jess's parents. Are we clear?"

To Dean's delight, Sam was reduced to scarlet-faced stammering, so he took it upon himself to say solemnly, "No worries, Tula - I'll give him a good talking to."

"I'll bet," she said, and she waved them out of her kitchen.

 

xXx

 

"Jessica, huh?"

"Not one word!" Sam snapped, annoyed.

Dean raised his hands peaceably, but he could barely suppress his grin. "Who, me? When do I _ever_ say anything, Sammy?"

"Jerk. And don't call me Sammy!"

"Aw, it's sweet. My little brother's growing up and got himself a girl - "

"I hate you sometimes," Sam grumbled.

"Only sometimes?"

There was a note in this that took Sam by surprise, but when he looked across at his brother, Dean's eyes were tracking up and down the street restlessly. "Dean? Man, I don't hate you. I don't think Adam does either, he's just being a brat. You know that, right?"

He should have saved his breath. Dean was very good at ignoring what he called "skirt-stuff" - namely, any topic that smacked of the emotional or personal, or really anything he simply didn't want to talk about.

"So where are we going?" he said, as though Sam hadn't spoken.

Sam let it go with a purely inward sigh. "Let's check his lodgings first. Then there's a couple of places where some of the older Blues hang out that we could check - one of the others in his class might know which one's the best bet."

"Alright. And I can have a word with his landlady and see what she knows."

"You really think she'll know anything?"

"Ellua's one of Jody's old squad-mates from the Guard," Dean said. "Why do you think I made Adam get a room there? Believe me, she'll know more than he thinks she does."

It occurred to Sam that Dean doing things like this was partly why Adam was so resentful of him. On the other hand, he couldn't really blame Dean for doing it. There was giving the kid a certain amount of freedom and responsibility, and there was leaving him to get himself into serious trouble through inexperience and recklessness. There were youths of sixteen or even younger who were perfectly capable of managing their own lives and even those of their families without interference or supervision; Adam frequently referred to kids they knew in the lower city who had taken on the mantle of the head of their family when one or both parents disappeared for whatever reason. What he failed to notice was that most of those kids had already been working at thirteen or even younger to help support the family, and that all of them were old beyond their years, just barely literate, and in most cases quietly struggling to keep body and soul together behind the brave faces their pride made them wear. Adam wasn't a bad kid, but he had been somewhat sheltered, first by their father and then by Dean and Sam. He lacked the hard-earned knowledge and experience of some of his earliest peers.

And Sam was self-aware enough to know that in some ways so did he. Dean was the tough one - but he was also the one who had barely finished basic schooling and who was now working every extra hour he could to provide for his younger brothers.

"You alright?" Dean said unexpectedly, and he was eyeing Sam a little guardedly. Sam wondered what his expression was saying to make Dean look like that; he hastily produced a grin.

"Sure."

Dean seemed to accept this and changed the subject. " _Jessica_ , huh?"

Sam sighed. "Cut it out, Dean."

"Hey, I'm just curious. Never heard you mention a _Jessica_ before."

Sam grunted discouragingly.

"She cute?"

"No," Sam said blandly. "She's got a hair lip, a birthmark the size of my hand across her face - a _hairy_ birthmark - and she's got one leg shorter than the other."

"But what are her bad points?"

"Seriously, how am I even related to you?"

Dean grinned.

Adam was lodging in a building much closer to the Collegia, and as they crossed a busy street into the outer precincts of the Palace complex the two men found themselves surrounded by hurrying trainees of a broad range of ages; a small, swirling sea of rust-red, grey, pale green and blue uniforms, occasionally punctuated by adults in Scarlet, Green, the midnight blue of the Palace Guard, and the blinding White of a Herald. The lodgings here were smaller than Sam's and reserved for students who were under eighteen. Theoretically they were also more closely supervised, but there was an expectation that anyone who was admitted to the Collegia's Unaffiliated programme would exercise a level of maturity and responsibility for themselves that was beyond the normal expectation for someone of their age. Dean led Sam through an arched entryway into a tiny courtyard in front of the tenement block, rapped briskly on the outer door and pushed it open. Inside there was a small lobby with a passageway and two sets of stairs leading off it, and Ellua the landlady was standing in the middle of it, briskly berating two well-dressed boys of perhaps fourteen years old for failing to deal with their laundry in a timely manner.

Ellua Threegoats wasn't someone whose name you would ever want to mock. Physically she was tiny, blonde and blue-eyed, and most people tended to disbelieve that she had ever been in the army, but this was a mistake. She was both much older and a great deal stronger than she looked; and Dean had an embarrassing memory of his brief period as a Guard cadet, when Ellua had still been on their payroll and teaching unarmed combat. Taking cocky, overconfident, teenaged boys down a peg or two had been Ellua's speciality, and it made her a very good person to manage the lodgings here.

She finished dealing with the two boys and sent them running out of the door, and turned to Dean. She didn't seem particularly surprised to see him and Sam. "He's not here."

Dean looked at her, and Sam thought he was bracing himself. "You know where he is?"

"Nope. But I do know he stayed out last night, and not for the first time."

Sam's heart sank. Of course, Adam staying out all night wasn't in itself an indication that he was doing anything more than crashing in a friend's room or pulling an all-nighter at one of the libraries on the campus. But something about Ellua's expression said that there was more going on than just overnight truancy of a minor.

And Dean knew it too; Sam could see it in the sudden bunched muscles in his brother's jaw and the slight tightening of his shoulders, as though he was bracing himself.

"Any idea where he was?" Dean asked, and his tone was all calm and casual. Probably only Sam heard the echo of the question from several years before, when their father had pulled a very similar stunt.

Gods, but he hoped they weren't travelling down that road again.

"Nope," Ellua replied again. The way she spoke was all army, even if nothing else about her seemed to be. Sam wondered if she swore and sang off-colour ditties, like the other ex-Guards he'd come into contact with. Tula, Jody and Uncle Bobby certainly did. "I got a boy here who just used up his last chance, though," she continued, "and for a good credit he can maybe give us a few ideas where the kid is now. Wait here a minute – "

She disappeared up the left-hand set of stairs and moments later they heard hammering on a door, followed by conversation. When Ellua returned there was a teenaged boy with her, probably around fifteen or sixteen years old, who was dishevelled and rather thin. Then Sam saw the hollows under his eyes and the slightly glassy look in them and knew what his problem was. From the narrowing of Dean's eyes, so did he. There was a pause when Sam saw Dean looking at Ellua and saw her pursed lips and tiny nod in return.

Dean looked the boy up and down very sharply, and said in a curt tone, "What's your name, kid?"

The boy hunched his shoulders, looking away, but Ellua gave him a sharp prod in the shoulder. "What did I say to you? He might not be in uniform, but this guy is a _Watch Captain._ You want me to give him a list of the stuff you've been doing, along with your father's name and where he can find him?"

"Name," Dean said, more curtly still.

"Tymol Tyerson," the boy muttered.

"How long have you been smoking yipweed?"

Huh. Sam would have put money on it being dreamsugar – yipweed was rather low-class for this part of the city.

"I don't – " the boy began.

"Don't even try that with me. You think I don't know what a yip-smoker looks like? I've seen scores of kids like you before and they all tried to tell me that they don't smoke that shit, they're not addicts, it's just a drag now and again, all their friends do it … So don't even say any of it. You're a yip-smoker and if Ellua goes to the dean, you'll be back home with Daddy before you know what hit you." Dean leaned forward a fraction. "That's if you're lucky, Tymol. If you're _un_ lucky, I go to the head of the Palace Guard and tell him there's a yipweed-ring operating on the campus. Your dad'll be called up here, your room'll get turned over, all your friends'll get questioned at the nearest Watch House, and you'll end up in front of a city judge."

Dean leaned back, regarding him. "Know what the usual sentence is for dealing yipweed?"

"I'm not dealing!" Tymol yelped, shocked out of his apathy by this hard recitation. "I just smoke it some nights – "

"If you have more in your possession than enough for just one smoke, you'll be charged with dealing," Sam put in quietly. He hadn't learned that at the Collegium. Every kid brought up in the lower city knew the laws on drug possession. "Even sharing a single smoke with a friend is classed as dealing. It's not like beer or tobacco." Sometimes he and his friends had long debates about the differences and whether there really _was_ a difference, but as far as the law was concerned alcohol and tobacco were legal. Yipweed, dreamsugar, poppy brick, tran-dust and several other intoxicants were not. Yipweed was supposedly the least addictive of the lot, but that didn't make it safe - it varied in strength depending on what it was grown on, and then there were other dried weeds some dealers mixed with it to make it go further, not all of which were safe to be smoked.

"I'll cut you a deal," Dean said in the same hard tone. "You tell me what I want to know and Ellua here has said she'll give you one last chance to clean up your act. You understand what that means?"

The boy licked his lips, his eyes sliding away from Dean's to Ellua's. "You won't tell my dad?"

"Not this time," she confirmed. "But understand me, Tymol - the slightest hint of any more rule-breaking and it'll be _me_ going to the Palace Guard. I won't have the other residents and my own reputation put at risk by you. Being taught at the Collegium is a privilege, and there are limited places. If you don't want your place badly enough to knuckle down, then you can go and let another kid have it who does want to learn."

"What do you want to know?" Tymol said to Dean sulkily.

"You know Adam Winchester?"

He looked surprised. "Sure. He lodges here too. We're in the same architecture class."

"You know where he hangs out when he's not in class?"

"There are loads of places. He's not one of my friends."

"Who are his friends?" Sam asked.

Tymol shrugged. "He sticks with the older ones mostly."

"And where do they hang out?"

"How should I know?" His voice was turning whiny. "There are so many places …"

"Guess you're gonna write me a list then, aren't you?" Dean said coolly.

When that was done - not without reluctance and a certain amount grumbling from the boy - they let him go, and Ellua turned to Dean. She looked weary.

"He won't stick it out, of course. He's probably reached the point where only a Healer can get him off the stuff. I hope his father knows a good one."

"It's not your fault," Dean told her.

She gave him a sourly amused look. "This, from you? Never mind. You realise Adam's already had a warning too? He's on thin ice, Dean, and I can't let him get away with it. I owe good people for getting me this position, and the other kids' parents trust me not to allow trouble into my house."

"I don't expect you to make any exceptions for him."

"I know that, but - it's not like you boys don't have enough on your plates already." She puffed out a breath. "They all give me cheek and attitude at that age, but sometimes I wonder what's going on with him. When I think … well, never mind. Do you want to look over his room before you go?"

Dean hesitated, but Sam was relieved to see him shake his head. "No, not unless he gives me a reason to. But we'll probably be back in a while."

"I'll be here," she replied, making a face.

"Where do you want to start?" Dean asked Sam when they were back out on the street. He thrust the sheet of parchment at him. "You know these places better than me."

Sam scanned the list, trying to ignore the sour sensation in his gut that was warning him that the day was unlikely to end with the three of them having a cheerful family meal in the most convenient local taberna. Some of the places on the list he frequented himself with his friends, but the greater number were places that he'd heard about but wouldn't consider patronising without a good reason.

"How optimistic are you feeling?" he asked reluctantly. One look at Dean's face answered him. "Yeah, that's what I'm thinking too," he muttered. "Look - some of these places shouldn't even be serving him, he's too young."

"I figured we'd be making a trip to the Watch House at some point anyway," Dean said bleakly. "We can let them know when we get there."

"We could start at the Rooster," Sam offered. "I know the barkeep pretty well, he'll tell me if Adam's been in there lately."

Thus began the most depressing trek through the upper city that Sam had ever been party to. Despite both of them attempting to keep a light note in their desultory conversation, the tension continued to steadily rise as they visited venue after venue and came up empty. Twice Dean baulked on the threshold of a tavern only for Sam to catch what stopped him a moment or two later - the faint, drifting stink of illicit smoke, the sweet smell of yipweed or dreamsugar or the heavier cloying scent of opium, which indicated to those in the know that somewhere on the premises was a 'room of dreams'. But at no point did they find Adam, and Sam was beginning to worry about the boy's safety. They checked a number of more legitimate student haunts as well - the public library and outdoor tea gardens that allowed Collegium pupils to study for hours on their premises so long as they bought something to eat or drink occasionally - and ventured into the docks, more respectable on this part of the river, to check the empty boathouses and wharfside shacks where kids often hung out.

Finally they made their way back to Ellua's boarding house, Dean tight-jawed and silent as he stalked beside his brother.

Sam glanced at him worriedly. "What do we do if he isn't here? I mean, I know it sounds stupid but he could just have headed down to Ellen's for all we know. Or gone to a friend's home."

"If he did, he'll either be back by now or he'll be waiting at Ellen's for me when I get there." Dean clearly didn't expect the latter, and neither did Sam really. "Either way, I'm gonna visit Captain Claeton at the local Watch before I go and give him a head's up - heyla!"

Ellua was waiting for them in the doorway of the boarding house. "He came in just five minutes ago," she said tersely, and Sam sagged with relief until he heard her next words. "Dean, I don't know where he's been but he stinks like a pot-house. I was stupid enough to tell him you're out looking for him and I think he's planning to make a run for it ..."

"Cover the back exit," Dean told her at once, and she disappeared into the house without an argument. "Sammy, hop up the stairs and hammer on his door."

"But what are you - "

"Don't argue."

 

xXx

 

Adam's room had a large-ish window that faced out over the courtyard. All Dean had to do was stand just outside the arched entrance to be invisible from there. He heard, distantly, Sam knocking on the kid's door and calling his name. Then the sash rattled and there was a familiar scrambling noise that made him roll his eyes in exasperation. For someone accounted to be very smart, Adam was really incredibly _dumb_.

A sharp crunch of gravel ... Sam shouted from above ... and Dean almost casually reached out and grabbed Adam's shirt collar and the back of his vest as he pelted through the archway.

"Cut it out!" Dean snapped at him when Adam tried to take a swing at him. "It's me - you _idjit_ \- and you're in serious trouble already!" He gave him a rough shake when the teenager still struggled. "Seriously? You really want me to show you who's boss here by putting you across my knee and tanning your backside? Gimme a break ..."

He had to haul his younger brother across the courtyard and through the front door, and Adam thought nothing of expressing his opinion of this treatment loudly and in language that would have put a dockworker to shame.

"Nice!" Ellua said, her eyes snapping with wrath as she met them in the hallway. "Keep that up, kid, and I'll wash your mouth out with lye."

"You'll have to get in line," Dean said tightly. "Sammy?"

"Here," Sam said unhappily. "Dean, his room - "

"Save it for now, I can guess." Dean manhandled Adam to the left-hand staircase and shoved him down so that he was sitting on the steps. The boy's clothes smelled ripe, musty and sour as though he'd slept in them somewhere damp and unpleasant. He grabbed his face and studied his glazed eyes for a moment, then released him and looked up at Ellua. "Who do you want to call, the Watch or the Palace Guard?" he asked her.

Ellua's expression was a mixture of grim disappointment and rough sympathy when she met his look. "Guard'll make less noise," she admitted, "but they might not look as hard as your boys. Might be better to call 'em both."

"Fine. Do it."

"Is that necessary?" Sam asked.

"Half those places we went to were letting folks use dope on their premises, Sam. Besides, you know as well as I do that it won't end here."

Sam hunched his shoulders up unhappily, but he didn't deny it. Adam stared up at Dean in disbelief and outrage.

"What, are you - are you turning me in to the Beaks?! I'm your _brother!_ "

"Nice of you to remember," Dean retorted. "In case you forgot, _I'm_ a Beak! And maybe you should have remembered that before you started pulling this crap with Sam and me in the first place!"

"Fuck you, Dean! What do you care what I do?"

"I care because you _are_ my brother, you little - " Dean managed to stop himself before he went any further, but for a second he was sure he saw red around the edges of his vision.

"If he didn't care, you wouldn't even be here!" Sam said angrily. "Neither would I! And if we didn't both care, we'd just let you screw up your life now - "

"Shut up! You're just a suck-up, I should have known you'd take _his_ side!"

"There are no 'sides' here, Adam - "

"Sam, let it go," Dean told him, suddenly feeling weary beyond measure. "There's no point in arguing with him when he's high on something, you know that. You'll get about as much sweet reason as I used to get from Dad."

The punch caught him off-guard and sent him reeling into the wall.

"You shut up about Dad!" Adam was on his feet and looking like something utterly demented, his hair and clothes dishevelled and dirty, his face scarlet and his eyes all but starting out of his head. "You're always bad-mouthing him, but he was the only one who cared about me - and he knew what you were! He knew you were evil! He saw the demons crawling out of your mouth and ass and - "

"Adam!" Horrified, Sam tried to grab him and fell prey to a flurry of blows and kicks that were backed by all the strength of a madman. He was hampered by a reluctance to hurt his brother, but Adam felt no such compunction in return.

Ellua reappeared at a run, and between them she and Dean managed to drag the boy off Sam and subdue him, pinning him to the floor. Unable to shake them off, Adam gave up on speech and began to scream wordlessly. The commotion brought all the other lodgers to the scene, staring down from the staircase and landings above in alarm and disbelief.

"I sent a runner for the Watch," Ellua said grimly, pitching her voice to carry over Adam's howls. "Told 'em to bring a Healer too, thank all the gods. What the hell has he been taking to cause this?"

Dean shook his head, white-faced. The screaming was easing off into gut-wrenching sobs; he felt safe to relax his grip a little and bent to check on the boy, stroking sweat-soaked blond hair back from his face gently. "Easy, kiddo, easy ... Sam, you alright?"

"Depends what you call alright," Sam said shakily. "I think I twisted my wrist. Dean, is he all right?"

"No," Dean said, and he found himself swallowing hard. "But he will be."

 

xXx

 

The Ropewalk Watch House was still bustling with activity when Dean stopped off there later that evening. The shift had just changed, and some members of the previous shift were practising their hand-to-hand and baton skills in the covered yard at the back of the building. Dean was on the morning shift and not due in for almost twelve candlemarks, but he was both too drained and too restless to want to go home.

He had a vague idea that some baton practice might help settle his mind, but when he reached the yard he found instead that most of the Constables out there were watching eagerly as _Gar_ Castiel threw knife after knife into the bullseye of the target at the bottom of the yard. When he was done with that, and Jo had collected the knives for him, he picked up a bow and proceeded to repeat the exercise with arrows instead.

There was a lot of cheering and good-natured catcalling when all but one of the arrows struck the black; and Castiel actually chuckled. Then he turned and saw Dean, and his face changed. Dean wondered what he saw to make him look like that.

" _Kapitane_ , we did not think we would see you today," was all Castiel said, but the concern in his eyes was palpable.

Dean didn't want his concern. "Yeah, well, I got back early," he replied. "Thought I'd just take a look in on you people, make sure I hadn't missed anything."

"It's been pretty quiet today," Jo said casually. Clearly she didn't see whatever it was Castiel thought he saw.

"Good ... that's good." Dean pulled himself together with an effort and pointed to the bow in Castiel's hand. "That a recurve? I've never tried one. What kind of reach can you get with it?"

"It compares well with most other bows," Castiel said after a moment. "We find it more convenient for use on horseback. The bow is your weapon, no? Would you care to try it?"

"Sure." Dean took it and set an arrow to the string carefully. "Huh - seems way too small. We use longbows back home."

Castiel adjusted his grip gently. "The draw differs somewhat - do you feel the power in it?"

"Yeah, but I'm not convinced you could outshoot a longbow with this."

"We should try it perhaps."

"Got my bows right here, locked in the weapons chest. I'd like to see you string one of 'em though." Dean lowered the bow without releasing the arrow. All his strength felt as though it was draining out of him into the boards beneath his feet. "You know what, maybe it should wait for another day. I don't think I'm up for it right now."

"You should rest - it has surely been a long day for you. The bow will wait." Castiel took it back. For a moment he studied Dean's face and seemed on the verge of saying something, but whatever it was he changed his mind. "Joanna and I were about to leave in any case. We will walk with you."

Dean would have liked to object but there was no good reason to do so, so he found himself walking back to the Roadhouse Inn with them. Jo was full of talk of the day's goings on; mercifully Castiel took the brunt of her conversation, allowing Dean to walk in peace. He didn't fool himself that the priest's intervention was anything other than deliberate, however, and wondered if he was going to have to field a lot of questions when they were alone.

Ellen's taproom was full to bursting when they arrived, and it occurred to Dean that the noise and activity in there was the best possible diversion he could hope for. And a drink was probably in order after the day he'd had. He pulled up a stool by the tap and when Ellen approached he ordered a jug of stout.

A scraping sound at his elbow made him look around; Castiel had pulled up a second stool by his side.

Ellen's expression was eloquent at this, but she merely said, "And what's your poison, _Emeja-gar?_ " using the old honorific reserved for priests.

"I think perhaps cider, if you have it."

Dean snorted. "How drunk are you planning on getting?" he asked, sourly amused.

Castiel raised his eyebrows. "On cider? Not very."

"He means the cider 'round here ain't the weak apple-water you're used to," Ellen told him good-humouredly. "Valdemaran cider'll lay you out flat faster than spirits of wine."

"It comes in three strengths," Jo added, as she rounded the end of the bar to go through into the private rooms behind the taproom. "Make-You-Sing-Strong, Knock-You-On-Your-Ass-Strong and Holy-Shit-My-Teeth-Have-Dissolved-Strong. Mom mostly sells Knock-You-On-your-Ass cider."

Castiel smiled. "Then I will try a half measure of it, if you please."

"Atta boy," Dean approved. " _Top_ half of the mug, Ellen."

"You mind your own," she told him. "You gonna eat something with that rot-gut?"

Dean's stomach lurched at the thought. "Thanks, but I'm not hungry."

"Screw that, boy, I ain't having you drunk in _my_ taproom just because you can't be bothered to ballast yourself. Anaelia made cheese-bread. If you want that stout, you'll have a plate of bread with it and no arguments."

Dean looked at her, annoyed at the unwanted interference - and saw the concern in her face that she was trying to hide under a gruff exterior. "Whatever," he muttered, and he dropped his eyes to the worn surface of the bar.

"And you, _Emeja-gar?_ There's the bread, cheese and a ham, or good vegetable soup."

"Bread and ham, I thank you."

"Coming up." Ellen walked away.

There was a long pause during which several of Ellen's other patrons began to sing a rather crude song over by the fireplace. Then Castiel drew a breath.

"Don't," Dean said curtly, before he could speak. "Whatever it is, I don't want to hear it."

"I merely wish to ask about your longbow," Castiel said mildly. "Do you truly think me unable to string one?"

"That's not what you were going to say."

"But you do not wish to hear what I was going to say."

Dean sighed. "Cas ..."

"Joanna is really very unobservant," Castiel said in Jkathan. "I'm sure I'm not the only one to have noted the bruise on your jaw, but the rest of your colleagues possess a small measure of tact. Who hit you, Dean?"

"You're not going to let it go, are you?"

"Not until I'm satisfied that all is well with you."

"All is not well with me and probably won't be for the foreseeable future," Dean said, and he felt his throat tighten in spite of himself.

Ellen returned with two mugs and a large plate containing chunks of crusty bread and a pile of thick ham slices. "Here you go, boys. Now - which of 'em gave you that love-pat on your jaw, Dean?"

Dean stared at her, exasperated. "What makes you think - "

"I know them both, remember?" She folded her arms and gave him hard look. "My guess, it was that little bastard Adam."

"Don't call him that."

"Why not?   When he wants, he can be as sweet as Sam. Just lately he's been a mouthy little swine, though, and you know it. If he gives _me_ lip, I can just imagine what he says to you."

Dean wanted to curl up under the bar and make the world go away for a while. This was not what he'd had in mind when he'd walked into the taproom.

"Did he hit you?" Castiel asked quietly.

"Yeah," Dean admitted reluctantly. "But that's nothing compared to what he dished out to Sam."

Ellen's eyebrows shot up. "Huh. What brought that on?"

"That's the big question, isn't it?" Dean lifted his mug to his lips, but the smell of hops was suddenly unappetising. He put it down again. "He'd been smoking something ... I don't know what. Not yipweed at least, it doesn't have that effect. He was like a lunatic. We had to leave him with the Healers, but I'll have to go back. Sammy's blaming himself but he's got his own shit to deal with. It's not his fault." Dean swallowed. "Guess you were right, Ellen. I shouldn't have let him go to the Collegium to study. He's too young."

"You did what you thought was right," Ellen said gruffly. "And your dad wanted it. Hell, most kids are plenty capable of taking care of 'emselves at fourteen. It's not your fault your dad coddled Adam and turned him into a spoiled brat."

When she walked away to serve another customer, Castiel said quietly, "Is there anything I can do to help you, Dean?"

Dean shook his head, though not ungrateful for the offer. "I have to go back up there tomorrow and talk to the Healers and the dean. Wait - could I give you a message for Jody and Henryks? I've been granted leave of absence by District Command to sort this out but I didn't get a chance to tell them."

"I'll gladly take whatever message you choose to give me." Castiel toyed with a piece of bread for a moment. "He's being treated by Healers? Forgive me, but - surely that will be expensive?"

"I don't know. I'm not thinking about it right now." Dean reluctantly picked up a piece of bread and began to nibble on it. Then he put it down again. "You may as well know - he was raving about demons. Accused me of being one in fact."

Castiel considered this. "If he was intoxicated, no reliance can be placed on anything he says."

"No, but we both agreed drugs and drink were more likely to make someone vulnerable to the _garuya_. And he's a student from this district. He knew the temple, although I don't think he ever went inside."

"Was there any other evidence?"

"No brimstone, if that's what you mean. We had to toss his room - search it," he clarified, seeing Castiel's puzzlement at the term. "We had to make sure he didn't have any more drugs stashed anywhere." Picking up the bread again, he muttered, "I always feel it's like legal burglary. The place was a mess when we were done."

"Will the authorities need to be informed?" Castiel asked, watching his face.

Dean shrugged. "I called 'em in myself. His landlady could have lost her licence if I didn't, and besides, I can't afford not to do things by the book. I know the Watch Captain there, though, and he's a tough bastard but he's fair. The Captain of the Palace Guard had to be told too. The rest of the lodgings were searched, and another kid got taken into custody." Dean felt a bit bad about that; not out of misplaced sympathy for Tymol but regret that the assurances he and Ellua had given had promptly been reneged upon. It left a bad taste in his mouth, regardless of the necessity.

"And will they charge Adam?"

"I don't know. He didn't have anything stashed." So he couldn't be charged with dealing, at least, and if Dean could persuade him to give up the name of the person who gave or sold him the drugs there was a good chance he'd get off with a warning. In that respect, the Collegium authorities made things easier; if Adam _was_ charged at all, the judge would be a Herald. But a question still hung over whether he would be allowed to continue his studies. And if he was fined at all, Dean wasn't sure how they would pay it, anymore than he knew how they would pay for his Healer's fees. He changed the subject. "If there was no sulphur in his rooms ..."

"Sulphur is only the most obvious sign. Something I found out today might be of assistance though."

Dean had forgotten that Castiel was planning to meet someone who might have information. "What's that?"

"I'll show you in a while, in privacy, but not here."

At any other time Dean might have cracked a joke at this, but his sense of humour had taken a serious knock after the events of the day.   He managed a few sips of his beer and forced himself to eat some bread with a piece of ham folded inside it, but all the while part of his mind was running over the likely expenses raised by Adam's problems, leaving him to wonder how he would raise the money to pay for them. He was living fairly close to the wind already and he didn't think he had anything he could pawn or sell to raise the likely sums of money. His father's belongings had all been sold to pay off his debts after his death, along with a small handful of his mother's things that had been left. Dean literally had nothing left of either of them but the Bel votary and Keirnys hanging in his rooms and the three longbows he kept at the Watch House.   He could perhaps sell the bows, although it was unlikely they would fetch much in the legitimate market here in Haven, and as a Watch Officer he couldn't turn to the black market. Sam possessed little besides clothes and books, and most of the books were loaned to him. Adam had owned a few mementos of his mother, Kate, but those and a lot of his other possessions were gone when Dean and Sam had searched his room under Captain Claeton's sharp eyes - probably already sold or pawned, to pay for the drugs.

Dean wondered if his brother would regret that once he was clean of the drugs. He hadn't liked Kate, and Adam probably didn't even remember her, but things like that still tripped you up at odd moments. That was why he didn't even consider selling the votary and hanging, the only mementos he had of his own mother. Perhaps it was selfish of him, but he had lost everything else of his family as it had existed before they came to Haven; he wanted to keep something that reminded him of that first home.

Castiel's voice very quietly intruded into his reverie. "Dean, you're very tired and you'll have a lot to do tomorrow. Let me tell you what I discovered today and then you should rest."

Dean pushed his mug and plate away and rubbed his eyes. "Yeah, alright."

 

xXx

 

"What in the nine hells is that?"

"Perhaps you should tell me?" Castiel perched on the edge of his bed and watched as Dean stared in astonishment at the pendant dangling from his fingers on its leather cord.

"It looks like …" Dean stared at it. It was a cast bronze charm perhaps the length of a finger joint, of a small and rather ugly figure, full face, with horns on its head. It was also vaguely familiar. "It almost looks like Keirnys. I've _never_ seen another image of him here in Haven. Cas, where did you get this?"

"That's an interesting story. The scholar I met today introduced me personally to another, much more specialised scholar at a convent not very far from here – the Order of Thane. This scholar is a renowned theologian here in Haven and not a member of the Order herself, but she lives with them now that she is mostly retired as she's the only representative of her own sect this far north." Castiel paused for a moment. "She is a Maenad – that is, a huntress-priestess in service to the god Kyrnos. She was delighted when I told her I knew someone here in Haven who had once followed the god in southern Valdemar, and insisted that you should have his token for protection and use against the _garuya_."

Dean's eyes snapped to Castiel's face. "You told her about that? You told her about _me?_ "

"I told her I was here to hunt it and that I had an ally in the city. I didn't name you, though. Dean, she guessed why I was here. I don't suppose it was difficult for someone with her knowledge of my Order. She won't talk, if that's what you're worried about. She's in her eighties and crippled with swollen joints, and the sisters told me she never leaves the convent now."

Dean wanted to grouch about this, but Castiel had to have any information they could get. One convent-bound elderly priestess surely couldn't cause any trouble for them. "Huh. She wanted me to have this? I don't know … what do you think?" He couldn't help the note of challenge in his voice, for he hadn't forgotten Castiel's reaction to the hanging on his wall.

But Castiel merely looked interested. "I've heard of Kyrnos before – or Keirnys, as you call him. Your story of him was rather different to the one I knew, but it was a surprise to hear his name at all in Valdemar, especially being worshipped alongside Bel. That pendant could be very useful, Dean. The Maenad placed several powerful blessings upon it for you, for seeking the _garuya_ and protection from it. She also gave me a message for you. She said to let the god guide you in the hunt, but to put aside your bow and let your heart and mind be your weapons when you find it."

"Not bad advice," Dean said dryly, "seeing as using a longbow in the city could get me arrested and thrown out of the Watch." He eyed Castiel speculatively. "Speaking as a priest of Bel, do you believe this could work?"

"I would never discount a religious artefact merely because it comes from a religion other than my own," Castiel said seriously, "and as a _han'garuya_ I was taught to make use of any weapon that comes to my hand. There's no reason to believe that Keirnys will not help you – us - if you have faith, Dean."

"I don't know, Cas. Faith's something I've been kinda short on for a while now."

"Yes. That is ... somewhat evident."

Castiel's expression was sympathetic but Dean, never comfortable with emotional displays, avoided his eyes and busied himself instead in pulling the thong over his head and tucking the little pendant inside his shirt.

"Did she say how it would help me identify the demon?" he asked idly, mostly to change the subject.

"No, but as with all such objects I would suggest that you allow yourself to remain open to suggestion from it while restraining your imagination. The guidance is usually subtle."

"And could just be my own gut, huh?" Dean gave him a knowing look.

Castiel smiled wryly. "Most gods prefer to operate unobtrusively, Dean."

"Seeing as most people see floods and earthquakes as acts of their gods, I'd have to dispute that," he retorted, but he grinned a little. Then another thought struck him. "Cas, when you speak to Henryks tomorrow tell him I said to keep an eye on the river reports. It's definitely showing signs of breaking its banks further up. It isn't likely to affect us, but the other Watch Houses along the bank'll need our help if they get flooded out in their sectors."

"I'll do so. Now - go to bed, Dean. You need to be rested when you visit your brother tomorrow."

"Ain't enough sleep in the world for that," Dean grumbled, but he took the advice.

 

xXx

 

"He has a hangover," the bright-eyed, curly-haired Healer told Dean and Sam bluntly the following morning. "A pretty horrible one. Not surprising really."

Dean wasn't sure he was in the right frame of mind for this Healer, who was too young, too cheerful and too positive at this hour. He'd been up before dawn and hitched a ride in a wagon carrying firewood to get to the Palace complex this early, and one cup of green tea at Sam's lodgings was not enough to prepare him for this kind of perky energy.

"What did he take?" he demanded. Finding out what Adam's situation was and dealing with it was all he really cared about.

"You're familiar with yipweed, I assume?"

"Yeah, we know about yipweed," Sam put in quickly, before Dean could get annoyed at what, to him, seemed like a pretty stupid question.

"Well, this is yipweed's nastier cousin – it's commonly known as rustwort, because it grows particularly well on the slagheaps around iron-ore mines. The miners have known about it for a long time but it's only recently that it started to show up here in Haven." The Healer made a face. "The mining people consume it all the time – literally, since they bake the ground-up root into cakes. It supposedly has a taste a little like coffee, only sweeter and smoother. And when it's eaten that way its stimulant properties are significantly muted by the slow cooking. You'd only get a very mild buzz, unless you ate an awful lot of cake at one sitting. But smoking the dried leaves is much more dangerous and causes quite nasty hallucinations, and what we've been finding so far is that people are smoking it without realising it isn't yipweed. It looks like it gets switched as a nasty joke."

"Is it addictive?" Dean asked, his voice hard.

"We haven't seen enough cases so far to be able to say, and to be honest I can't imagine why anyone would voluntarily take a second hit, but even yipweed can be habit-forming after a while. Since it's a very similar plant, in the same family, I'd say … it could be." Something in Dean's expression clearly alarmed the young man, for he hurriedly added, "There's no evidence that your brother has ever taken it before – I think you'd know if he had. Like I said, it's more likely this was a very nasty prank someone pulled on him."

"Yeah, I want that person's name."

"Don't we all." That harsh voice was Captain Claeton's, and he strolled up to them, nodding casually to the Healer, who took this as his hint to leave.

Claeton was a very weather-beaten Watch veteran in his early fifties with grey hair that was cut brutally short and a worn leather patch over one eye that had been lost in his Guard service during his youth. Dean sometimes wondered how a man like this – hard, plain-spoken, incorruptible – managed in the Wrights-and-Smiths Sector, with its mixture of aristocrats, wealthy merchants, priests and intelligentsia. A good proportion of them probably loathed him, either for his rough manners or his rigid honesty, but although he was a little wary of the man Dean was inclined to like him. Claeton reminded him a lot of Bobby Singer.

"You didn't waste any time this morning," Claeton commented.

"Yeah, I want to get this sorted out."

"Let's talk about that. Come into my office, both of you."

Captain Claeton's office at the Wrights-and-Smiths Watch House was bigger and more comfortable than Dean's, and not only did he have a scribe but said scribe had her own desk area outside the captain's office. Dean gave up on even being envious. There was no point, as Claeton managed to make it all look briskly efficient rather than relatively luxurious. He indicated two chairs in front of his uncluttered desk and took a seat himself behind it.

"So, Winchesters," he said amiably. "I knew your father. Didn't like him, wasn't surprised by what happened to him, but I'm not going to hold that against you. Just so you know."

"Appreciated," Dean said, glancing at Sam who was looking rather flustered at this blunt comment.

"Let's talk about the boy. Your kid brother came here to get educated and got himself into trouble at the first opportunity. Nothing unusual about that; I see cases like his every other day around here. Let me ask you a question – what's the best outcome you're hoping for here?"

Dean raised his eyebrows at Sam, who looked even more flustered for a moment. Then he pulled himself together.

"We didn't find anything in his room, so you can't charge him with possession," he said cautiously, "and if we don't press charges for assault – we're not going to press charges, are we?" he challenged Dean, who shook his head. "So you can't charge him with assault."

"I could start by charging him with affray on Ellua Threegoats' property," Claeton said mildly, "but that wasn't what I asked you, son. What's the ideal outcome for you two?"

"He's released without charge and the dean of the Unaffiliates allows him to stay here," Dean said. He swallowed the sour taste in his mouth. "But we both know that's not going to happen."

"Not as things stand," Claeton agreed. "You brought in the Palace Guard as well as me – which was the right thing to do – and they can't look the other way now that there's been a serious incident in a property that technically belongs to the Crown. As you know, we've got another boy here from the same building who's on charges of possession and dealing. His daddy's a man with a little money and he started throwing his weight around as soon as we notified him, so he's looking for someone else to pin the blame on." He raised a hand to silence Sam's explosive protest at this. "Let me finish. I'm not interested in what old man Tyerson wants because it's clear the two incidents are unrelated. What _I_ want, and what the Captain of the Palace Guard wants, is to get both of those boys through the system and back on the straight and narrow as fast as possible, without a lot of mess, so we've jointly requested a hearing in front of a Herald instead of dragging them in front of the magistrates. Your brother's best hope is to give us some useful information that can offset the charge of affray. I want whoever gave him that rustwort, and ideally I want as many of that person's associates as well. And I want the person who sold _them_ the rustwort. I don't care if it was a joke, I don't need 'jokes' like that in my sector. So - with a contrite attitude and a willingness to help the authorities, this could all pass off nice and painlessly for your brother." Claeton paused meaningfully. "The question is – will he do the sensible thing?"

Dean and Sam looked at each other for a pregnant moment.

"I don't know," Dean admitted. "Let's find out."

 

xXx

 

Adam was currently being held in a cell that was reserved for detainees who had medical problems. Unlike the Ropewalk Watch House, where the intoxicated got put in a cell that was under the direct eye of the custody officer and left to recover, Wrights-and Smiths was a bigger and better equipped outfit by a wide margin and even had their own healer on site. Dean cynically assumed this was because the well-off preferred to be detained in relative comfort. So in this Watch House Adam got a proper cot bed in a nice, clean, whitewashed cell, rather than the rough pallet on a rush-strewn floor that he would have got in most other Watch Houses. Looking at his pale, sweaty face and hunched posture under the rough blanket, Dean rather doubted his little brother would notice the difference. He was too busy trying to manage his misery.

Dean pulled up a low stool beside the cot and took a seat, and after a moment or two Adam reluctantly opened his eyes a crack. They were red, bloodshot and watery.

"How're you feeling?" Dean asked him.

Adam swallowed. "Like shit," he rasped.

"Want some water?"

A spasm of acute nausea crossed the boy's face and he shook his head slightly.

"Alright. You know where you are?"

" … Watch House."

"That's right. They're going to charge you as soon as you can stand up straight."

Adam considered this for a long while. Eventually he asked in a hoarse whisper, "For the weed?"

"I don't know. We didn't find any in your lodgings or on you, but now's the time to tell me if you've got something on your conscience."

Another headshake. Adam squeezed his eyes shut; he was probably at the dizzy stage of his hangover.

"Alright, that's something," Dean said. "You want to tell me who sold you that shit?"

"Didn't buy it."

"Maybe not that hit, but you bought the yip you smoked before that, didn't you?"

The red eyes opened a slit again. "How do you know?"

"Your mom's prayer book and beads and her mirror are gone. Did you sell 'em or pawn 'em?"

"Does it matter? They're gone." For a moment Adam squeezed his eyes and mouth shut tightly, and an odd little quiver crossed his face. That relieved Dean, just a little; the kid wasn't as indifferent to what he'd done as he tried to pretend.

"We might be able to get them back if they were pawned," Sam suggested, from where he was standing by the door. But he had to know that it wasn't likely. To get them back, they would have to pay off the pawnbroker, and that was very low on the list of things their money was earmarked for at the moment.

"Why do either of you care?" Adam said bitterly. "She wasn't _your_ mom, was she?"

"She was the only mom Sam remembers," Dean said evenly.

"But _you_ don't care. You hated her."

Dean didn't bother to deny it, but: "That's not the point. If I care, it's because I don't have much left of my own mother and I wouldn't want to lose what little I have."

Silence. He sighed.

"Who gave you that last hit, Adam?"

"No one. A friend."

"Some friend," Sam muttered.

"Fuck you. So what if my friends aren't fancy types like yours?"

Sam's mouth tightened angrily.

"Look," Dean said, hanging onto his patience doggedly, "this is what's going to happen. You're going to be charged with affray and put in front of a Herald, where you're going to have to explain yourself pretty good if you want a hope of getting out of this. The best chance you've got is to tell Captain Claeton who you got the stuff from, and he'll put in a good word for you in return."

"What good'll that do? They're going to throw me out of the Collegium anyway, right?"

"I don't know. I haven't spoken to the dean yet.   But I do know that if you don't start helping yourself a little, you're going to get the book thrown at you and you'll be tossed out of the Collegium for sure. If that happens, you'll come back home with me and take up an apprenticeship you'll have to stick with for the next five years, like it or loathe it."

"I'll join the Guard," Adam muttered.

"They won't take you if they know you've been smoking yip," Dean said flatly. "Neither will the Watch."

"You're loving this, aren't you? You've been waiting for an opportunity to get me out of here."

Sam let out an impatient snort, but all Dean said was, "If that was true, I never would have let you come here in the first place. It would have saved me a lot of money and grief. Now tell me who the hell gave you that shit! And while you're at it, you can give me a list of all the places you went to smoke it."

"Go to hell!" Adam snapped weakly at him.

"Or we can do this the hard way," Dean continued grimly. "I can do what Captain Claeton really wants me to do, and press charges for the assault on me and Sam. Assaulting a Watch Captain gets you half a year in the army kitchens or laundries and a fine you'll spend the next five years trying to pay back. How does that sound?"

Adam's eyes were suddenly wide open with alarm. "You wouldn't."

"You sure about that?" Sam put in, his voice hard. "You're the one who keeps telling him he's a complete shit who doesn't care about you."

Dean and Adam stared at each other for a long moment.

"As it happens, I _do_ care," Dean told him roughly. "You're still my kid brother, and I care enough that I want to hunt down the dipshits who did this to you, because you're family and no one messes with my family. It doesn't matter if you don't believe me." He rubbed his face with his hands wearily and got up from the stool. "I'm done here. You tell Claeton or you don't, it's up to you - it's not like I can make you do anything."

A tiny note of fear entered Adam's voice. "Where are you going?"

"To talk to the dean. See if he'll let you continue studying if we can sort out the rest of the mess you're in."

Sam was out of the door and Dean following him, when Adam suddenly said, "I'm sorry."

Dean let out a breath and looked at him. He was only sixteen, after all, and Dean could remember doing things himself at sixteen that probably wouldn't stand up to much scrutiny.

"I know you are," he said as gently as he could manage. "Trouble is, that's not enough this time. You're gonna have to convince that Herald who takes your hearing, and apologies are just words to them if you can't back it up with something better. Think about it, alright? I'll be back a little later."

 

xXx

 

"Cap'n!" Rufus looked astonished to see him when Dean walked into the Watch House two days later. "We weren't sure when we were going to see you again."

"Yeah, well, the wheels of justice move real quick when the Heralds decide to get involved," Dean said wryly.

Rufus's craggy old face shifted into concerned lines. "How's the boy?"

Since it was unlikely that Castiel would have talked about Adam's problems, Dean could only marvel at the efficiency of the local rumour mill, which sometimes seemed to catch wind of unfortunate events even before they happened.

"He's back where he belongs, kinda subdued and being forcefully reminded by everyone except me just how lucky he is."

"That's good to hear," the old constable said sincerely. Then his fierce stare fixed on Dean's face. "What about you?"

Dean's smile grew even more wry and strained. He was down by three days' pay and Adam had been fined ten crowns, but it could have been much worse. He would take that and be grateful for it, although he had no idea how they would pay the fine yet. "I'm good, Rufus. Henryks and Jody got everything under control here?"

"It's all good, all smooth," Rufus assured him. Then he snorted. "Apart from the dancing goat."

"What, again? Did that guy come and get her?"

"Not that I heard. She's going to the pound tonight if he doesn't turn up."

"Great. Well, it could be worse. I'll be in my office if anyone needs me."

"Sure thing."

Dean had to pause in the doorway of his office. It had been transformed during his absence; piles of paper and parchment were now neatly stacked on shelves, tied into bundles and docketed for easy reference, and for once he could see the two desks and three chairs without having to move a mountain of rubbish first. The fireplace had reappeared as well, and now had a small fire burning in it with a kettle hanging over. Dean could smell gillyflower tea brewing, strong and harsh, the way all Watch Houses brewed their tea.

Castiel was standing in front of the scribe's desk, studying a sheet of paper with some kind of list on it. He looked up sharply when Dean walked in and his face lit up with an unexpectedly bright smile.

" _Kapitane!_ We were not expecting you so soon. Is everything well?"

But Dean was transfixed by his office. "Holy crap, Cas - how did you magic all that shit away?"

Castiel's smile turned just a touch mischievous. "I will not deny that it helped for you to be away for a space." He switched to Jkathan. "Dean, how are you? What happened? How's your brother?"

Dean felt the tension of the past few days beginning to drain away, and he took his cloak off, hanging it up beside the fireplace.

"It's alright - it's good," he said, and he allowed himself to finally feel relief . "They made him move lodgings, so he's back in the dormitories on the campus, but he's doing good and they let him off with a fine and strict warning - bound him over to stay on the straight and narrow until he finishes his studies. It was a Herald who made the judgement, and she had some discretion - we got him to tell us who he got the stuff from and where the kids went to get it and smoke it. It's good information - the Watch Captain's gonna keep me informed."

"Dean, that's good news," Castiel said sincerely. "You and Sam must be relieved."

Dean laughed a little. "Yeah, I guess so."

Castiel hesitated, then said tentatively, "Did you get to the bottom of the things he said about demons?"

Dean's smiled faded. "No, but it was probably the drug talking. They say it causes some fierce hallucinations. I gotta admit that wasn't the first thing on my mind, Cas. But ..." He fished in his tunic and found the folded piece of paper Captain Claeton had given him before he left. "This is a copy of the list of student hang-outs Adam gave the Watch. Sam's added a few too. The boathouse, public bench and study garden that got toasted are all on it, along with a couple of places that have been fired in the Palace sector."

"Excellent. We must study it and consider what to do next."

"Later, yeah? Not here." Dean looked around and decided to pour himself a mug of tea from the kettle. "Alright ... can you give me a rundown on what I missed?"

"Perhaps I should start with your messages? I kept Joanna company on the desk yesterday, as it was unusually busy." Castiel pulled a small sheaf of notes off a pin on one corner of his own desk.

"Oh, let me guess," Dean said, eyeing the stack warily. "Widow Keffrey came in - about her neighbour's cats maybe?"

"Yes, how did you know?"

"She's a regular."

"That's certainly one way of describing her." Castiel switched back to Valdemaran. "And her neighbour – Widow Mentoch? – also came, to complain about Widow Keffrey's talking bird. She says it screams insults at her."

Dean nodded. "It does. She bought it from a trader who got it from a fisherman on Lake Evendim. Swears worse than my old captain, Bobby Singer. Alright – anyone else?"

"An official from the Provost Marshal's office left you some reports he wishes you to read as a matter of urgency - they are on your desk, I have flagged them. Healer Bettany has asked that I remind you to visit her this week for your … I am not sure of the word, but it is a medication to prevent a disease?"

"Inoculation?" Dean offered.

"Yes. What does it mean?"

"They scratch your arm with a needle that has stuff on it, and when it gets into your blood it helps stop you getting sick. It's for diseases like the Lesser Pox and a thing called Jawlock that's in the dirt just about everywhere - we have to have the jab for that done every year."

"Ah, I understand. Thank you. This is from Idris Keymaker – he asks that you visit him, but at your convenience. He has information about a lock-breaker he says you have been searching for."

"Huh - didn't think I'd be hearing about that one again. Good news. That it?"

"Of messages, yes, as Lieutenant Henryks has been dealing with the others. This is a list of lost property brought here in the last few days - I have had no opportunity to add the dancing goat, however."

Dean snorted. "Don't worry, nobody's gonna forget the dancing goat in a hurry! You know, when I was posted to the Watch House at Exile's Gate the only thing ever handed in to the lost property store there was a mummified dog someone found and couldn't wait to get rid of. They swore it was cursed. Here? You would not _believe_ the crap people hand in."

"I would," Castiel said dryly. "Joanna and I have had to store it."

Dean grinned at him, amused by the exasperated note in his voice. "Was it heavy, stinking, growling or just filthy?"

"Heavy, for the most part. How does one lose a barrel organ?"

"Beats me. Not like it's small, huh?"

"No," Castiel agreed. "Why was so little lost property handed in at Exile's Gate?"

"Because there's no such thing as lost property there, only property that's temporarily between owners." He saw the look of incomprehension on the other man's face. "It's a really poor area. If someone finds something, they make use of it, and everything – _everything_ – is useful to someone there. Anything that isn't bolted onto granite foundations gets lifted."

"I see."

Dean wondered if he really did, since it seemed unlikely that a priest from a very wealthy and privileged background could have much in common with the desperately poor of lower Haven. On the other hand, Castiel was full of surprising knowledge.

He poked around among the paperwork on his desk and noted a couple of ominous official seals. "Right. Better see what the Provost Marshal wants, I guess."

He'd been reading for less than a quarter candlemark when Rufus put his head around the door. "Cap'n?"

"Yep?" Dean dragged his eyes from the interminable document in front of him. "What's up, Rufus?"

His unflappable constable had a very odd look on his craggy old face. "You'd better come and see this, Cap'n."

Dean frowned even as he got to his feet. "Why?"

"I just … come and see."

Dean followed him out into the small reception area – and stopped dead. "Oh _hell_ no …"

The visitor standing placidly right there in front of the reception desk huffed a little and fixed one big blue eye on him. Large, gleaming white, undeniably horse-like, and clad in his best blue and silver tack with the bridle bells: a Companion. It was anyone's guess how he'd got through the door, and in fact his rear end was still mostly outside. Dean could see a cluster of small children out in the street watching in fascination.

Clearly he wasn't there for Rufus, who was uncharacteristically at a loss for words. Nor was his Herald in evidence, which strongly suggested he _had_ no Herald – yet. Dean didn't entertain the idea that the Companion had come for him for one minute, for he was in his twenties now and … well, it was far from impossible for him to be Chosen at his age, of course, but he honestly doubted that he was one of the select few. But that could mean only one thing, and all his previous good mood of that morning began to drain away.

He'd only seen a couple of Companions this close in his whole life, but Watch officers got training in how to deal with situations like this. With a faint sigh, Dean approached the Companion and checked the markings on his tack for his name.

"Heyla, Eslan," he said, and he dug in his pocket for a bag of lemon sours, the bitter little sweetmeats he occasionally bought for himself and which he remembered Herald Marisa's Companion sharing his taste for. "Let me guess," he said, as he tipped a couple of the sweets into his palm and offered them to the visitor. "Your Herald's stuck down a well and needs our help."

Eslan snorted and shook his head, making his bridle bells ring, before delicately lipping the treats from Dean's hand.

"No, of course not." In spite of the bitter sensation building in his chest, Dean gave in to impulse and stroked Eslan's nose. It was incredibly soft and silky. "Well, you obviously aren't looking for me or Rufus. We got anyone in custody right now, Constable?"

"Nope," Rufus said, and by his grim tone Dean knew he'd come to the same conclusion as his Captain.

"Yeah ... thought not. I guess I better go get him for you, then."

Eslan whickered and nodded his head gracefully, making the bells chime sweetly again.

It was stupid to be resentful about this, Dean told himself sharply. It wasn't as though he'd ever been under any illusions about the permanency of Castiel's stay here in the Strangers Quarter. And he didn't think anyone would deny that this was an excellent choice on the Companion's part, for Cas was a genuinely good man. Valdemar needed people like him. It was just …

He killed the thought dead before it could even form itself properly.

_Stupid,_ he told himself harshly as he paused in the doorway of his office. _Never get attached, they always leave. Everyone leaves eventually, one way or another._ Castiel's messy dark head was bent over his work. For the last time, as it happened, although he didn't know it yet.

Dean found he had to clear his throat. "Hey, Cas?"

Castiel looked up and Dean was suddenly struck by the fact that his blue eyes were almost the same colour as Eslan's.

"You got a visitor," he said, and his voice sounded a little stiff even to himself.

For a moment Castiel looked perplexed, trying to decipher Dean's expression, then astonished as he got to his feet. "No - it cannot be my brother, surely?"

"Not unless there's some seriously weird shit going on in your family."

Castiel gave him a confused look, but stepped out into the reception area. And stopped, giving Dean an even more bewildered glance. "Why is there a horse in here?"

Rufus made a strangled noise in his throat.

"Not a horse," Dean said, and he gave Castiel a firm push in the right direction. "He'll explain."

"But I don't – oh."

Dean decided that the floor was the most interesting thing to be looking at, right at that moment. He'd seen one other Choosing, when he was a Watch runner, and … well. Private moment, in his opinion. Besides, he didn't want to watch.

He told himself it wasn't jealousy, or bitterness at seeing a friend taken away from him. The sour sensation in his gut was just the over-boiled gillyflower tea taking its revenge.


	4. Chapter 4

"You don't need to tell me, I already know," was how Ellen greeted him when Dean returned to the Roadhouse Inn that evening. "You've got a visitor."

The last thing Dean needed was more visitors, but a young man dressed neatly in the uniform of the Palace servants was waiting respectfully by the bar. "Captain Winchester, sir, the Dean of the Heralds' Collegium sends his compliments, sir. I'm here to collect Trainee Castiel's belongings for him."

The proverbial pin could have been heard dropping in the silence that gripped Ellen's customers as they watched this, agog.

"Sure," Dean said through gritted teeth. "Come on upstairs. He didn't have much stuff with him."

It took mere minutes to gather up Castiel's neatly organised belongings, and most of that was actually spent persuading Baby to get out of one of his bags that she'd been curled up inside. The young man gathered everything together, then fished in his belt pouch and offered Dean a round metal token.

"Herald Raylor, that's the Dean, sir, said to tell you that because circumstances are different in the city, the Strangers Quarter isn't eligible for the usual tax rebate given to towns and villages that help the newly Chosen," he explained. Judging by the way the boy recited this, it was a memorised speech. "But in recognition of the assistance you and others have given to Trainee Castiel since he came to Haven, your Proctor has been given instructions to make a rebate of a month's taxation for yourself and the landlady of this establishment. Certain other arrangements have been made to lessen the impact of his departure, but the Dean asks that you let the Collegium know if anyone suffers unforeseen hardship above and beyond that."

Dean briefly toyed with the idea of sending the Collegium a bluntly worded message about needing a trained exorcist at the earliest opportunity. It was a nice fantasy, but he could just imagine the trouble it would get him into, and hadn't he had enough trouble lately? "I doubt that'll happen, kid, but thanks anyway."

The boy gave him a brief smile - he was so fresh-faced and squeaky clean that he made Dean's teeth ache - and left, toting Castiel's bags over his shoulder.

Ellen was waiting at the bottom of the staircase when Dean finally gave in and went downstairs. "They sent a Palace Guard with that boy, and a donkey-cart with a driver," she said, and shook her head. "Palace folk."

"Good thing they did, he'd never have made it safely back to the Collegium before dark on his own."

"They give you a tax-chit?" she demanded.

"Yeah." Dean turned it over in his fingers. He couldn't help thinking that this would cover Adam's fine - no small relief to him, although the lost wages would still leave him in debt.

"Nice. Want to know what else they did for you?"

Not really. Dean had had enough of the Collegia for a few years. But she was clearly bursting to tell him, so he raised his eyebrows enquiringly.

"They paid your rent and board for the next quarter," Ellen said, and she folded her arms, waiting for his reaction.

He was stunned. "They _what?_ Why?"

"Beats me. Guess someone must like you." Ellen's expression said a lot, but she kept her mouth shut, and Dean was grateful for that. He was pretty sure he didn't want to know what she was thinking.

"I need a drink," he muttered, and he was suddenly conscious of how tired he felt. The last few days had been exhausting, and now - this.

"I'll bet you do. Come into the taproom - there's egg and onion pie, and you can have a mug of porter on me just this once. I'm feeling unexpectedly flush."

Dean managed to drag up a weak smile at this. He didn't really want to do either of those things, especially in a taproom full of local people raucously celebrating Castiel's Choosing - any excuse for a celebration - but he did it anyway.

Unfortunately, the world didn't stop whirling on its way just because one man was having a really shitty week.

 

xXx

 

The week that followed was no less exhausting for Dean, although there was at least one small compensation. Having arrived at the Watch House the day after Castiel's Choosing, wondering if he'd had an opportunity to make notes about his filing system before he left, Dean opened his office door to find a familiar figure standing behind the clerk's desk, perusing documents casually.

"Ash?" Dean stared, then belatedly remembered to shut the door behind him. "What are you doing here?"

Despite Ash being a fellow lodger at the Roadhouse Inn, Dean almost never saw him. Since being removed from the Ropewalk Watch, Ash had been reassigned to the District Commander's office, and when he wasn't at Headquarters, he was in his own words generally 'conserving his energies'. (Sleeping.) He was a few years older than Dean, although that was easily forgotten as in many ways his development seemed to have been arrested somewhere in late adolescence. He tended to be scruffily dressed, straggly of hair, and sleepy of eyes as though he was perpetually half-stoned, and - according to Anaelia and Tamar – once a week Ellen had to chase him out of his rooms with a broom and make him scrub up in the laundry while one of the other women cleaned for him. Apparently they flipped a coin for the job.

How someone like Ash managed to survive at Headquarters was anyone's guess.   His languid and casual attitude to just about everything had to be like nails on a slate to the District Commander, who was ex-Guard and had a real thing about neatness and discipline. He was, however, exceptionally good at what he did, which perhaps explained the poor justification for removing him from the Ropewalk Watch in the first place.

Seeing Dean, Ash opened his arms wide as though he wanted to embrace the very air that enveloped the Watch Captain and said: "Dean! My man! It is _good_ to see you."

"Yeah, it's good to see you too, but why are you here?" Dean went to drape his dripping cloak over a chair by the fire. The rain was still not letting up.

"Reassigned. The Big Man himself came by my desk just as I was taking my leave, and told me to report here this morning. Indefinite contract." Ash gave him a lazy smile. "Between the two of us, I think he was a little unhappy, Deano. Word is he had the bite put on him by the _Heraldic Circle_ no less."

Dean began to wonder just how much the word 'Herald' was going to feature in his life from now on. Apparently they had gone from being as rare as flamingos in the Strangers Quarter to being everywhere and doing everything, especially when it involved doing nice things for Dean Winchester. It couldn't _all_ be laid at Castiel's door, surely. He hadn't been with them a full day yet.

Pissing off the District Commander was not helpful, however, and Dean felt his stomach twinge in alarm. "How unhappy is a little?"

"Don't sweat it," Ash advised him, unconcerned. "Kudos on this fine filing system, by the way. I almost could have made it myself."

"Great. Seriously, Ash, how much trouble am I in?"

Ash looked surprised at this. "Not a bit, Deano. Not that I heard. And between you and me - " he gave Dean a knowing half-smile, "this scribe's sources are _good_. No, Herald Heavy visited the Big Man and smoothed your path. And, not so incidentally, mine." Ash made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the whole Watch House. "I like it here."

Dean was only partially reassured. He knew the District Commander and knew he would not take kindly to being leaned on by the Heraldic Circle. Heralds, Heralds everywhere ... and every last one of them a mixed blessing.

Feeling grumpy and unsettled, Dean went to take roll-call.

 

xXx

 

All unacknowledged personal feelings aside, Dean's biggest worry about Castiel's departure was how to solve the demon problem. He had the list of illicit recreation spots that Adam had given to Captain Claeton and he planned to investigate them still, but even if they somehow managed to lead him to the demon's intended victim (and he didn't hold out much hope of that) he wasn't sure what he could do for them. At the back of his mind was a barely acknowledged niggle of anxiety that the victim would indeed turn out to be Adam after all. Dean didn't fool himself that the brief moment of amity between them over the past few days was in any way a permanent ceasefire. Once Adam began to get back on his feet and regain his confidence, it would probably be back to the usual state of armed truce between them. And if he was hiding more than just a minor drug habit from his older brother, Dean didn't think he would have any greater reason to confide in him about it.

But in the end, he could only follow the leads he had and hope that he could deal with whatever he found at the end of them. And in the meantime there was plenty of other work crying out for equal attention from him, so Dean knuckled down to deal with it.

Visits to locksmiths, orders from headquarters, Jo's six month evaluation, handing out fines and warnings, attending magistrates' and Heralds' courts, interviewing landlords and shopkeepers, disciplining a constable found drunk on duty ... The everyday work of a busy Watch Captain that never stopped, even in the face of fire-starting demons and rising rivers.

Throughout it all the rain kept falling ... and falling ...

 

xXx

 

Ten days after Castiel's unexpected Choosing, the river Terilee broke its banks. The Guard and the Watch were ready for it, but despite constant warnings being issued, the local populace were not.

This, Dean knew, was inevitable. Very few ordinary folk in the lower city were willing to leave their residences unless they were absolutely forced to, and as the Terilee hadn't broken its banks since Dean was a boy most of them were convinced that the warnings issued would either not come to pass or, in the case of a hardened minority, that it was deliberate scaremongering on the part of the authorities for some nefarious purpose of their own. Also inevitably, when the flooding did occur those same people were furious that they hadn't been evacuated in time.

The Strangers Quarter was largely unaffected by the flooding, as it was on higher ground and further from the river, but that didn't let Ropewalk Watch off the hook. The District Command put every Watch House in the city on notice of extraordinary duty, which meant that Dean had to put all three shifts on duty together and call up a list of retirees to help man the essential functions. One shift would continue to man the Watch House and patrols, with assistance from the retirees, while the other two would assist the bankside Watches with sandbagging and evacuations.

Fortunately, his walks through the city during Adam's crisis had one benefit; Dean was braced for flood duty well in advance, had looked up the relevant regulations, warned all three shifts, and begun putting the retirees on notice of call-up, before the official orders were sent through. Consequently he was able to leave the Watch House in the capable hands of people like Ellen with a minimum of complaining, arguments and fuss. It was a small thing, but Dean felt proud that his people were the first Watch to arrive, in good order, at the temporary headquarters for deployment. And with any luck, the criminal element of the Strangers' Quarter would find any attempts to take advantage of the situation duly foiled by the tough, experienced team left behind.

Hopefully it would be enough to put him in District Command's good books, if only temporarily.

The flood effort was a great equaliser, Dean was to discover. Even the Commanders were taking their turn on the front line. Nobody was allowed to stay on the same job too long, the various shifts and gangs of workers being regularly rotated to ensure that no one got stuck up to their hips in water or arguing with recalcitrant elderlies for more than a few hours at a stretch. Dean had made a point of reorganising his people's shifts in advance to ensure that the oldest constables stayed at the Ropewalk Watch in relative safety, but not every Watch Captain - or, indeed, Guard Captain - had been so careful, which meant that their overall Commanders were kept busy trying to ensure that some of the older constables weren't put in positions that could endanger them.

By early evening on the first day, however, there wasn't a single person who wasn't wearing a wet uniform and exhausted mentally and physically. It was still raining, the temperature, in typical spring fashion, had decided to drop unexpectedly, and the waters were still rising, albeit more slowly. Dean stopped off at the headquarters building at dusk (a commandeered guildhall) and was passed a large mug of hot spiced apple juice before he was fully through the door. Manning the urn was his old Watch Captain from Exile's Gate, Bobby Singer.

"Practising for your retirement, old man?" Dean teased, although his heart wasn't entirely in it; he could see all the heavy-duty lanterns being checked by a gang of Artificers on one side of the room, which meant they would be working through the night. Not exactly a surprise, but daunting nevertheless.

"Stow it," Bobby told him brusquely. "I got my feet wet earlier. Here - you get a hot pie too."

"Thanks ..."

"You good, son?"

Dean looked at him, surprised, and saw that despite Bobby's gruff demeanour, he was watching him with barely-hidden concern from under his bushy eyebrows. "I'm good, Bobby. Sorry I haven't been down to see you lately, but you know how it goes."

"Better'n you think. I heard about that limb Adam."

"There anyone from here to Sweetsprings who _hasn't_?"

"Don't give me that, boy. How bad is it, really?"

"Really?" Dean sighed. "He got a fine and was bound over. Could have been worse."

"'Could have' means jackshit." Bobby never bothered mincing words with anyone. "How bad were you stung for it?"

"Ten crowns, but I'm good. Had a piece of luck straight after that cancelled it out."

Bobby grabbed his elbow, startling him. "Dean, are you card-sharping again?" he demanded in a low voice.

"What? No!"

"You _sure_?"

"Dammit, Bobby, do I look like an idiot?" Dean hissed. "I'm not about to risk my job just to pay off Adam's debts."

"Do _I_ look like an idiot?" Bobby shot back at him. "You think I don't know how far you'd go to protect those boys? I was there the last time!"

Dean pulled away from him, shaken and unable to meet his eyes. "Yeah, but that was different - "

"Like hell it was!"

"I was only a lieutenant then. I've got too much at stake now!" Dean saw the doubt in Bobby's eyes. "God damn, Bobby ...! I got a month's tax relief and three months' rent paid for me at Ellen's, alright? Helped out somebody who got Chosen."

Bobby stared at him for a long moment, then released his arm. "All right then. But you get stuck again, you talk to me, you understand? I ain't gonna let you go under on _my_ watch, boy."

Dean felt an unexpected tightness in his chest at this gruff admonition. "Bobby … look, I'm a grown man, you don't have to – "

"Balls," Bobby said curtly. "Shut up and eat your pie, idjit."

Bobby didn't do emotional stuff either. Dean let it go with relief and drained his mug, handing it back.

"Guess I'd better round up my people and find out where they need us next …"

He was interrupted by a sudden bustle outside, then someone in a gleaming white uniform strode into the hall, an older woman with short brown hair and a square jaw. Dean could just make out a sizeable group of other people behind her, all in white or grey uniforms. Heralds and Herald trainees.

Bobby snorted. "'Bout time the god-blessed white-shirts showed up and did a turn," he grumbled.

Dean found he didn't have anything to say to this. The Collegium contingent poured into the room, upwards of a score of them, but Dean saw only one. Dressed in a grey uniform and heavy wet-weather cloak, the messy dark head was nevertheless instantly recognisable to him, and Castiel's bright blue eyes turned to meet Dean's as though he'd called across the room to him.

The uniform suited him, which was odd because by all the unusual laws governing such things the pale grey and stark white of Herald uniforms shouldn't really be flattering on anyone. Clearly palace tailoring could work miracles, but perversely Dean missed the tan of Castiel's familiar priestly habit. Not that it was any of his business.

The Herald in charge of the group went off to confer with the various commanders gathered, leaving the others to talk among themselves, and Castiel immediately walked over to Dean.

" _Kapitane_ , it is good to see you here."

"Heyla, Cas. Ready to get your feet wet? 'Cause that's gonna be the least of it." Unsure why, but wanting to deflect whatever Castiel was planning to say to him, Dean gestured to Bobby, who was watching them curiously. "Do your guys want a hot drink before they get started? Gonna be a long night. This is my old Captain, by the way – Bobby Singer, from Exile's Gate."

Castiel offered Bobby a short bow, unfazed by the frowning look Bobby was giving him from beneath his shaggy eyebrows. " _Kapitane_ Singer, forgive me but there is something I need to say to _Kapitane_ Winchester. If you will excuse us?"

Dean managed to suppress an exasperated eye-roll and reluctantly followed Castiel a few steps away. "Cas, I don't think – "

"Dean, we must talk." Castiel had switched to Jkathan. "This business of Choosing is most unfortunately timed, but I haven't lost sight of the need to find the _garuya_ , I assure you."

Dean sighed. "Cas – I know diddly-squat about training to be a Herald, but I'm pretty sure it's not going to allow you time to go galloping around the city, hunting down demons. You're gonna have to let me handle it."

The look Castiel gave him said louder than words that he thought Dean was an idiot. "That's not an option, Dean. You haven't been trained to pursue and confront such beings as I have."

"And I'm telling you that doesn't matter anymore, because you've got a more important job to do – and don't look at me like that, you can't tell me they haven't already given you a talk about what it means to be a Herald."

"They have," Castiel said, and his tone was dry enough to make the flood waters recede, "and it doesn't involve leaving an innocent young man to cope with the attentions of a demon, protected only by a man with a truncheon who has no experience of demons whatsoever."

Ouch. But part of Dean was glad to see the unfamiliar flash of annoyance in Castiel's eyes. Better that they shouldn't be on such friendly terms anymore, he couldn't afford that with someone who had already effectively walked out of his life.

"Really," he said, and his own tone almost matched Castiel's for aridity. "That sounds great, but have you run this stuff past your new superiors in the Circle? They good with it?"

Castiel didn't have an answer for this.

"Yeah, that's what I thought." Dean nodded. "Let me know when you decide to tell them all about the demon. I'd love to be there. You know, seeing as we don't really have demons in Valdemar anymore."

Castiel stared at him for a long moment, and Dean had a struggle to maintain a nonchalant expression under those piercing blue eyes. "I don't understand why you're suddenly being so obstructive about this," he said. "I thought we were in accord over what has to be done."

Long and hard experience had taught Dean that he couldn't rely on even the most well-intentioned of people, and he didn't see anything in his current situation with Castiel that didn't bear out the truth of that.

"Yeah, well situations change, Cas, and I don't say I like it but that's just the way it is. Gotta play the hand we're dealt." He saw his District Commander beckoning to him from the other side of the room. "Speaking of which, I gotta go. You take care out there tonight, you hear me? That river's still rising."

"Dean …"

"See you around, Cas." Dean slapped him on the shoulder in a friendly way, and walked away before Castiel could detain him any longer.

Obeying the District Commander's summons wasn't an improvement over an argument with Castiel, but more like the exchange of one kind of pain for another. Unfortunately, it wasn't just a different sort of difficult conversation that Dean walked into. For once the District Commander's terse orders were stripped of his unvoiced dislike of Dean and straight to the point.

"You need to take one of your squads and get back to your sector on the double," he said, before Dean even had a chance to salute him. "A messenger just brought word - there's another fire in progress."

Dean's stomach lurched horribly. "Where, sir?"

"At the Convent of the Holy Order of Thane."

 

xXx

 

By the time Dean arrived at the convent, the fire had already been extinguished, helped no doubt by the steady rain that showed no sign of letting up. By that time it was well into the early hours of the morning. Luckily, the conflagration hadn't succeeded in engulfing the whole convent complex, but it had started in the dortoir block reserved for the most elderly and infirm of the Order's residents, and by the time it had been got under control, two of the sisters were dead and another four had been removed to the main building where healers were treating them.

At dawn, Dean was picking his way through the ruins of the dortoir block, accompanied by the chief of the fire crew, Elkins.

"This one seems to have been started in one of the old ladies' cells," Elkins was saying. "Not one of the nuns – a pensioner living with them. Don't ask me how, since she can barely walk on a good day by all accounts, but she got out into the corridor. She's one of the ones the healers are with now, though if you ask me she still won't make it. Got too big a bellyful of smoke."

Dean crouched down gingerly for a moment, and dabbed his fingers on the carbonised remains of a clothes chest. "Did she see who did it?"

"Yeah – from what she was raving about when they dragged her out, someone broke into her room. Said she fought with him." From his tone, Elkin's wasn't putting much stock in this version of events. "Didn't say who he was, what he looked like or where he went, though, and none of the other sisters saw anything."

Dean stared pensively at the smudge of yellow dust amid the charcoal coating his fingertips. Then he wiped it off and stood up. "Let's hope she's still able to talk."

The Order of Thane wasn't one Dean was more than passingly familiar with. He knew it was a goddess sect and that it generally followed similar principles to the triple aspect goddess religions elsewhere in Haven, but that was about all. The trappings of the convent, and the garb of the priestesses, however, suggested that it was one of the older, less anaemic goddess sects, closer to the earthy type more typically found in rural areas. The priestesses wore trousers and tunics rather than habits, and carried sickle-shaped blades on their belts; most of them had visible tattoos and even a few piercings.

"I wonder what your friend the priest would make of these nuns," Ellen said, appearing at his side.   She was dressed in her old Watch uniform and was wet and covered in ash and soot. She also looked tired to her bones. "Little different to those Sisters of Charity, huh?"

Something stirred at the back of Dean's mind, the memory of a conversation with Castiel. Of course - this was the convent Castiel had visited to speak to the priestess of Kernos.

"The woman who said she saw the man who did this," Dean said to Ellen. "Can she talk?"

"I don't know – the healers have her in a room over there." Ellen waved to a door that was standing partly open.

Dean nodded to her and went to see what was happening.

The room behind the door served as a chapter house for the nuns; it was large, probably airy and light during the day, and had rows of wooden benches which had been pushed to the walls on either side to make space for the healers to work. At the far end of the room lay two bodies covered with sheets. Four pallets had been brought into the room for the injured and several nuns were treating them, supervised by a Green-clad Healer.

A senior priestess moved to intercept Dean as he approached. "Captain, I am Mother Istos, the spiritual leader of this Order. Please accept my gratitude for your Watch House's swift action when the fire broke out."

"I can't take much credit for that," Dean said uncomfortably. "I was somewhere else, helping with the flood relief. But I'm real glad my people were able to handle this and I'll pass on your thanks. The fire chief has confirmed the fire is completely out now, but I'm sorry for the loss of your two sisters. How are the injured doing?"

"Healer Garrick believes they will all live, although he's concerned about Roe Damia's lungs. The fire started in her cell, you know. She's not one of our Order but came to live with us when she was no longer able to live alone in the forest. Are you familiar with the cult of Kyrnos?"

"Yeah," Dean said after a moment. "Yeah, I am. Is she able to talk? I really need to find out what happened tonight."

"For a short while only," Mother Istos cautioned. She grimaced. "This will be a tragedy if she dies. The Maenads grow fewer every year and we've so far failed to find a suitable acolyte to whom she can pass her wisdom before she departs this world."

Not having anything helpful to say to this, Dean made a sympathetic noise as she conducted him to the Healer and his supine patient.

_Roe_ was the Maenad's title, an honorific that Dean was puzzled to recognise until he set eyes on the old woman lying on the pallet and realised where he knew it from. Roe Damia's lined old cheeks and withered hands and arms were covered in faded blue tattoos that he had seen before, as a child. In his home village of Dell's Crossing there had been a woman, a huntress, probably not young even when he was a boy, although not notably old either. She hadn't lived in the village, but whenever a major hunt was undertaken she would come out of the woods and lead it, and no one in the village had ever questioned her right to do so. Dean remembered her tall, whipcord figure, the leather garments she wore, and the spears and bow she had carried so casually, as though they were part of her. Her body had been covered with blue woad tattoos too. Some of the older boys, he recalled, had joked and whispered about her; there had been wild speculation about her as a woman, because she certainly hadn't been married.

It was only now, staring down at this elderly Maenad, that Dean realised the woman he remembered must also have been a priestess of Keirnys, the god of the deep woods. What had her name been? Roe … Roe … Roe Tallis, that was it.

Then Roe Damia opened her eyes and saw him, and at once stretched out a shaking, claw-like hand to him. Dean knelt beside her and took the hand gently. "Roe Damia?"

Her fingers slipped from between his and came to rest on his chest, directly over the spot where the pendant Castiel had given him lay beneath his tunic. Dean immediately pulled it out, not bothering to wonder how she had known it was there.

Her voice was feeble and hoarse from the smoke. "You are the one … the hunter."

Dean went along with this. "Yes."

"He came to me tonight …" Her breath was rattling in her chest as she fought to speak.

"Who was he, Roe Damia? Can you describe him?"

"An old one … I knew him though … Az … Azazel."

"That's his name?" Dean felt a leap of excitement in his chest at her faint nod. With the demon's name, Castiel would perhaps know how to track it.

"I knew him," Roe Damia whispered, and her lips curved into a triumphant smile for a moment. "Old Yellow-Eyes …" Dean stiffened at this, but she didn't notice. "Thought I couldn't fight him, but he was wrong." Her grip on his hand suddenly tightened. "Listen, hunter – _put aside your bow._ Use your instincts to find him … make the trap inside your mind … thoughts to be your arrows … form the circle and put all you love inside it, safe from his harm. Then he cannot fight you …"

She began to cough and a firm hand tugged at Dean's shoulder. "That's enough, Captain," Healer Garrick told him. "She absolutely must rest."

"Alright." But Dean paused to squeeze the Maenad's hand gently. "We'll get him, Roe Damia. I promise."

"Use your mind," she insisted.

"I will."

Satisfied, she subsided and one of the priestesses moved in to gently adjust the blanket covering her.

Dean stood up and turned to find Ellen standing right behind him, her eyes sharp. "What the ever-loving hells was _that_ about?" she demanded.

Dean was more than a little surprised at the hard grin he produced in response to this.

"I'm gonna catch me an arsonist," he told her.

 

xXx

 

When Dean finally made it back to the temporary headquarters, dawn was breaking over the city and he discovered that his crew had been dismissed for a day, along with many others. The rain had subsided again to a sullen drizzle – although scuttlebutt among the milling officers was that the weather-wise Gifted among the Heralds were pessimistic about this being more than temporary – and for now the flood evacuations were under control. Dean reported in, received his own orders to stand down and got a further admonition to report on the fire to the District Commander as soon as this emergency was over.

That made it hard not to feel a certain amount of gratitude for the flood, but Dean stifled this by concentrating on the thought that by the time the river receded he might actually have something to report. Although the nature of the arsonist did raise the sticky question of how he would report on it to his superiors, regardless of the outcome.

But in the meantime, it was more important that he take action and with that in mind Dean made a few discreet enquiries before he left headquarters. The Heralds had been deployed to evacuate the residents of the next area liable to be flooded out, a series of streets not far from the docks that housed large scale textile workers, mainly carpet weavers. And as luck would have it, Dean had a reasonable excuse for following them there.

More than a year previously he'd had an affair with a woman called Lisa in the textile district. The situation had been an unusual one for Dean; she was very newly widowed and in need of a shoulder to lean on, while he had been in the middle of what was probably one of the most difficult periods of his chaotic life. It was the first time he had felt inclined to pursue a relationship with someone rather than something more casual. Being a rock for Lisa had been less stressful and difficult to deal with than his troubles at home, providing him with a meagre refuge, but their relationship had not been without a sting in its tail. Within a matter of weeks it had become clear that Lisa was pregnant, but it had taken longer than that for her to admit that the father was her late husband, not Dean. After a struggle with himself, he had chosen to believe her on that point – she certainly had nothing to gain from telling him the truth. They had even, in due course, parted on affectionate terms.

Unfortunately, the ever-interested wider community had seen things rather differently, with the result that while Dean would have liked to continue in a supportive role to Lisa as she raised her son alone, the gossips and busybodies had made it almost impossible. In the textile district Dean was held to be a deadbeat father who had abandoned Lisa when she most needed him (that he was not the father of her baby was an inconvenient minor detail), while in the Strangers Quarter Lisa was denounced as a conniving slut who had been out to entrap him. Not conditions in which a healthy relationship of any type could thrive.

Nevertheless, Dean tried to visit her every so often and they maintained a certain careful friendliness. It wouldn't be considered out of the ordinary for him to check up on her in the circumstances, and that was how he came to be helping Lisa pack up her things to evacuate, when Castiel tracked him down instead of the other way around.

"How did you find me?" Dean demanded, as he carried a wriggling baby in one arm and a bulging basket in the other, out to a donkey cart waiting for them in the narrow street.

"I have ways," was Castiel's uninformative reply. "Here, give me the child. Where are you taking him?"

"I ain't taking him anywhere." Dean handed Ben over without an argument; given Lisa's vehement instructions, he wasn't sure which it would be worse to drop, the baby or the basket. Castiel didn't look like someone who had a lot of experience with children, but he handled the boy competently enough. "Carter's taking him and Lisa to the Pottery District. She's got family there."

"I see. Is this the boy Ellen says everyone believes is yours?"

Dean was pardonably annoyed by this. "Ellen's got a long nose and big mouth," he grumbled. "He's not my son. Lisa was pregnant when her husband got killed in an accident. Staging collapsed on one of the wharves near here. But we've been close and I keep an eye on 'em both."

"I don't doubt you, Dean," Castiel said mildly. He bounced Ben gently; the baby had stopped wriggling and was staring at him. "Were you looking for me?"

"Yeah, how did you know? I was gonna come find you as soon as I got Lisa sorted out."

"It's unlikely the water will rise to any significant degree in this street," Castiel observed.

"I know, but it's still not a good idea for them to be stuck here. They live on the second storey. If the river takes a while to go down, it's gonna be a problem - the nearest well's in the next street, just for a start." Dean stuck his head inside the doorway and shouted up the stairs, "Lise, are you nearly ready?"

She came down the narrow stairs cautiously, carrying two more large and well-stuffed baskets. She was a tall woman, only a year or so younger than Dean, with strong features and long dark hair. "Only one more trip - oh, hello."

"This is Castiel," Dean told her. "He's a friend. Here, I'll get the rest. Gimme your key and I'll lock up for you."

"Careful with the wicker basket, the cat's in it," she admonished him, handing him her key.

Dean rolled his eyes and ran up the stairs. There was a sturdy canvas bag with a drawstring top that felt heavy enough to be loaded with rocks, and a wicker box that meowed. Judging by the state of the apartment, Lisa was taking everything with her but the rented furniture, and she had taken Ben's crib in any case. As he secured the door, Dean wondered if she was planning to come back. She only stayed in the weaver's district because her husband had lived there and it had been simpler to stay put. This might be the push she needed to relocate. Dean wasn't sure how he felt about that.

When he walked out into the street, Lisa and Castiel were making rather stilted conversation. Eslan had appeared beside them, huge and supernaturally white, and Ben was eagerly tugging on his mane, something the Companion bore with a great deal of patience. Dean heaved the canvas bag into the cart, placed the cat basket more gently but securely between two other boxes, and turned to face the others.

"Ready to go?" he asked Lisa.

She took a long breath. "Yes ... yes, I guess so." She climbed into the back of the little cart and held out her hands for Ben. "Thank you for holding him."

"My pleasure." Castiel had to gently disentangle Ben's hands, which produced a cry of indignation from the baby. "You should go swiftly," he told Lisa. "The river rises slowly, but it _is_ still rising."

She nodded and settled Ben on her lap. Then she gave Dean an uncertain smile. "Thank you."

"Hey, no sweat. You just take care of yourself and the kid."

"I will …"

"Lady, we gotta go," the carter told her, a little impatiently, from where he was standing by the donkey's head.

Dean waved them off at once. "Go on, go. I'll catch up with you in a few days."

The carter took this as his orders and tugged the donkey's lead rope, and the cart set off with a jerk. Dean watched them go until they turned the corner at the end of the street, then he turned to Castiel.

"Shouldn't you be somewhere, evacuating people?"

"Those who have been advised to evacuate from this district have almost all gone," Castiel replied. "Why were you looking for me?"

Dean told himself he was imagining the stiff, hurt note in Castiel's voice. The guy didn't have a reason to be hurt by their previous conversation – right? "There's been another fire," he said, and he was pleased to see that he immediately had Castiel's attention.

"Where?"

"At the Convent of the Holy Order of Thane – "

"The _garuya_ has attacked Roe Damia?" Castiel said, interrupting him.

"Yeah, good guess." Dean grimaced. "She might live. Let's hope so, anyway. But Cas – it made a mistake! She knew it and she fought it off."

It was stupid and made no sense, but Dean was ridiculously pleased by the way Castiel's face lit up at this.

"She is a true huntress before the gods," Castiel said reverently. "You say she knew it? This is more than we could have hoped for!"

"She told me its name – can you use that?"

"It's possible. I'll need to consult the demonaries. Come, my books are at the Collegium …"

Dean watched him swing himself into Eslan's saddle, bemused. "Cas – haven't you forgotten something? You're supposed to be helping with the evacuation, not chasing demons."

"So are you," Castiel retorted.

"I've been released for a day," Dean began.

"And so have I. There is little more that can be done at this point but wait upon the river, so we may as well do something constructive." Castiel held out his hand. "Come – mount up behind me! Eslan and I will return you to the Roadhouse in good time, if that's what you're worrying about."

"But – "

The argument was clinched by Eslan, who snorted and stamped a hoof at him impatiently.

"Alright, alright … sheesh …" With Castiel's help, Dean managed to pull himself up behind him. "I haven't ridden since I was a little kid," he grumbled.

"Believe me, we can tell," Castiel said dryly. "Now hold on to me – Eslan is no horse, I warn you."

"I _know,_ Cas," Dean said, exasperated. "I had to tell _you_ that, remember?"

 

xXx

 

Recent visits to his brothers aside, Dean had never been inside the palace complex, and certainly he had never expected to go anywhere near the Heralds Collegium. This part of the campus was approached from a different direction to the other schools and the increased security as they passed through multiple gates in walls was immediately apparent. Eventually they came to a huge building that looked remarkably like a stable – _Well, duh_ , Dean thought irritably, because while a Companion might not be a horse, it still had an awful lot of horse-like aspects – and dismounted in the yard. Eslan at once went off on his own into the stable, leaving Castiel to guide Dean to another entrance.

"Aren't you going to unsaddle him and stuff?" Dean asked, surprised.

"Ordinarily, yes, but there are grooms who will look after him today. This is more important." Castiel opened a door and steered Dean through it into a dimly-lit passageway. "Up the stairs to your left, I have a room in this wing …"

Clearly it hadn't taken long for Castiel to settle in at the palace. Perhaps all of this reminded him of home.

It didn't have any familiar reference points at all for Dean. There was a large courthouse in the lower city that had plastered and clean-painted walls like these and polished wooden floors, and even multiple blown glass lamps to light the inner rooms, but it still wasn't like _this_. The sheen on the floor alone made him nervous about where he was putting his feet and when Castiel eventually opened an equally polished wooden door to a small room with a bed, chair, desk and fireplace, with woven rugs on the floor, Dean wanted to tuck his hands under his arms to avoid putting dirty fingerprints on the surfaces. There were more glass-shielded lamps in brackets on the walls and shelves containing books, and on the wall behind the bed – which was made up with good linens, colourful woollen blankets and soft-looking pillows – there was a tapestry hanging depicting a scene that even Dean knew was Vanyel's Last Stand.

"Shut the door behind you," Castiel requested after a moment. He was giving Dean an odd look, but all Dean could think was how clean and tidy this room was in comparison to his damp and ash-stained self. "You can sit down, you know. There is only one chair, so sit on the bed."

"No I can't," Dean blurted out before he could stop himself.

Castiel stared at him. "Why not?"

"Cas, man, look at me – I'm _filthy_."

"No matter. The bedding will be changed tomorrow."

Dean could just imagine what Ellen would say to that. Even her need to make a crown or two would balk at washing sheets that looked barely used. But it was that or sit on the floor, so he gingerly perched on the edge of the bed and watched as Castiel pulled several of his demonaries off the shelves.

"You keep those things on the shelf, in full view?"

"Yes, why not? One of the best places to hide a book is among other books. Besides, no one would come in here without invitation. I'm exempted from room inspections on account of my age and experience." Castiel smiled. "The other trainees are all young and haven't yet learned how tiresome mess and clutter can be."

"Huh. Guess there's a pretty big age gap between you and the others."

"Yes, but it isn't a problem. My training will be somewhat different from theirs because I'm already well educated and have been about the world. I don't take formal classes with the younger ones; I have a mentor." Castiel wrapped his hands in the lengths of raw silk and opened the first of the books. "Now – what name did Roe Damia give you?"

"Azazel," Dean said, and he swallowed the strange apprehension that the name provoked. "Uh … she called it _old yellow-eyes_ too."

"Interesting …" Castiel paused on a particular page, staring at it for a moment, then tilted the book so Dean could see the nightmarish image. The insane yellow eyes jumped out at him from the page. "This is the _garuya_ you noticed when we last looked at the books together. Perhaps Kyrnos has been guiding you all along."

Dean was remembering his father's ramblings about yellow-eyed demons though. "Would have been nice if he'd just come straight out and told me, then," he managed, when it seemed like Castiel required an answer. "Could have saved us a lot of time."

"Perhaps."

Castiel laid the book back on his desk and studied the pages for a long time in silence, leaving Dean to stare vaguely at the fireplace … until suddenly he found Castiel gently pushing him back onto the pillows and lifting his legs onto the bed.

"What …?"

"Dean, you're asleep where you sit. Rest awhile. This will probably take me a hour or more." Castiel pulled one of the thick woollen blankets over him.

"Cas, I can't, I have to go back to the Watch House soon – "

"And I told you – Eslan and I will take you there. Now _rest_."

He wanted to protest, but the pillows had to be stuffed with feathers. He'd never laid his head on anything so soft before. And the blanket was so warm …

_He's very stubborn_ ," Eslan said to Castiel, as he looked down at Dean in affectionate exasperation. The Watch Captain was asleep within moments.

_Yes, he is. How he lives on so little food and sleep is a mystery to me._

_But there's something he is not telling you. You were right about his Mindspeech – I can hear tiny echoes back when you talk to him, and there's something troubling him very deeply about this matter._

_That, too, I know._ Castiel stared down at Dean, brooding over this. _He must be connected to this somehow – the coincidences are too great._

_We have a saying – "Once is chance, twice a coincidence, but three times – "_

_"Is a conspiracy", yes, I know it. But I don't believe there is a conspiracy here. He is afraid of something – that one of his brothers is the demon's target, I think._

_Does he have a reason to believe that, beyond any of the evidence you already have?_

Castiel's lips tightened. _I think he must._

 

xXx

 

He stood by the side of a rushing, overburdened river and watched in awe as its furious flood waters swept whole trees and cattle away with it into the distance. Mud, rocks, branches and rubbish were flung high up onto its banks, along with dead fish and the corpses of small animals and river birds. The waters were black and ugly.

"Water will stay it."

Dean turned, startled. Two women stood behind him, tattooed and dressed in leather garments, one carrying a spear and the other a longbow. He had just a split second to recognise them – one was Roe Damia and the other Roe Tallis – before they merged together into one unfamiliar woman, tall, strong and exuding strength and power.

"I don't understand," he told her, and it seemed like the most important thing he could say in that moment.

"Water will stay it," she repeated, "and so you must surround yourself with water. But first you must trap it, in locks of salt. Then you may hold it fast, holding the sigil in your mind."

"What sigil?"

"This – " She stretched out her hand and flames leapt from her fingers; she drew a shape in the air, where it hung, flickering. "Set aside your bow, hunter. Let your mind be your weapon, for it cannot possess or control your mind without your consent. Hold the sigil in your mind and you will bind it to you. Surround yourself with water to hold it fast."

"How do I find it?" Dean demanded, staring at the burning sigil hanging in the air. He could smell smoke somewhere …

"You will know it when you see it," she told him. "It is close, very close. Do not be led astray by false witness. It will try to mislead you, but its very attempts will show you the true way. Be strong. Do not fear what you see."

The smoke was becoming to strong to ignore.

"Something's on fire," Dean said, tensing, but when he looked away from the sigil, the woman was fading from sight. "Wait! The fire – "

"It is close. Be strong."

"But – "

Something grabbed Dean's shoulder urgently and he was spun up and out of the dream, to lurch brutally awake in Castiel's dormitory room at the Heralds' Collegium.

Castiel was gripping his shoulders. "Are you awake? Dean!"

"'M awake, 'm awake," he mumbled, and he managed to make his hands cooperate enough to rub his face. His heart was racing and he was sure he could still smell smoke somewhere.

"Here, drink this." Castiel forced a mug into his hands and helped him put it to his mouth. The tea was bitter and foul, but very effective at clearing his head. "I'm sorry, but you must wake up. There's a fire in one of the dormitories."

That acted more effectively than any tea could. "What?"

"A fire, Dean, in the Unaffiliated students' dormitory."

Dean stared blankly into the other man's eyes for a long moment, then the words suddenly made sense.

"Adam!"

He was on his feet at once, swaying for a moment as he fought to get his balance, sleep still hanging heavy on him. He glanced reflexively out of the window and saw that the day was well advanced – it had to be late afternoon.

There was something wrong about that.

"Wait – all the other fires – "

"Took place after sundown or at night," Castiel said, nodding. "This is either a break in its pattern, or the fire is unrelated."

"But it's in the student block …"

_It will try to mislead you._

Dean stared at Castiel, trying to remind himself that it had only been a dream. But what if … "Cas … what if it wants to make people think it's Adam doing this?"

Castiel stared back at him for a long moment, blue eyes intense and searching, as though he was trying to see right into Dean's mind to find what had prompted that idea. With an inner start, Dean remembered that some Heralds supposedly could do exactly that – read people's thoughts. But Castiel couldn't do that, surely?

"It's a possibility," Castiel said, before Dean could decide to panic over the thought of his mind being read. "The _garuya_ is canny and cunning. But this may have nothing to do with Adam, Dean, sometimes a fire is just a fire. We need to find out, quickly."

"He's got one strike against him already," Dean said, as they left Castiel's room.

"It's useless to speculate until we get there," Castiel replied firmly, steering him towards a different set of stairs than the ones they'd come in by.

A door opened near the head of the stairs as they approached, and a White-clad figure emerged. Dean almost felt relieved at this; the building seemed spookily quiet to someone as used to cramped conditions and perpetual bustle as he was. Then she gave him a surprised smile and he recognised her.

"Heyla, Marisa."

"Dean Winchester! What brings you here of all places?" Herald Marisa looked at Castiel and her eyebrows went up. "You look serious. Trainee?"

It was faintly ridiculous to Dean that someone like Marisa, who had to be a good five years younger than Castiel, was addressing him with such natural authority. On the other hand, he supposed he must speak like that to his constables most days.

Castiel looked glad to see her, though. "Herald Marisa, there is a fire in the Unaffiliates' dormitory, where _Kapitane_ Winchester's brother is currently living. We need to find out if he is involved."

There was a strange little pause as the two Heralds looked at each other intently, and Dean felt compelled to add, "He's been in trouble lately and he don't need to get into any more."

"I see."

And from the look on her face, Marisa really _did_ see, which was weird, although not as weird as the feeling Dean was getting that he had just missed half the conversation somehow.

"I'll come with you, then," Marisa said, and she gestured for them to take the stairs.

Deeply unsettled, Dean followed Castiel down the stairs, wondering all the time what the hell was going on all of a sudden. Everything had seemed reasonably clear-cut to him when he'd left the Convent of Thane that morning, but in the meantime things had somehow slipped from his control.

He liked Castiel but he didn't understand the changes he sensed had occurred in the man since he'd been Chosen, and he didn't like that he didn't understand them. It was suddenly making him doubt if he was right to put all of his trust in him – which was ridiculous, the man had been _Chosen_ , which was as good a guarantee of trustworthiness as you would ever get anywhere in the world, but that didn't make any difference to the feeling in Dean's gut. He wanted to trust Castiel – he wanted it so badly, he could taste it – but in Dean's life sudden changes had never meant anything but misery and loss.

And then there was this shit with Adam, and it was beginning to look more and more like he was the youth the Bel priests had claimed went to them for help, except that didn't make any _sense_ to Dean. He couldn't reconcile it with what he knew of his younger brother, or with the kid's attitude and behaviour. Was it possible Adam was being used as a diversion? But that would mean the demon knew Dean was hunting it, and that didn't make any sense to him either. And if Adam wasn't the target, then who was?

Experience from the previous fires led Dean to expect billowing smoke long before they arrived at the dormitories on the far side of the Palace grounds. In fact, there was very little smoke and it wasn't obvious until they were practically on top of it. There was bustle and many people milling around the courtyard outside the building, but no panic, no fire crews – just a lot of rubbernecking residents and a handful of Palace Guards.

"Can't have been much of a fire," Dean blurted out.

"We're better prepared here for this kind of thing," Marisa said. "Fire buckets on every landing and regular drills so people know how to get out of the building in an emergency. No overcrowding, no dangerous construction methods." She saw the look on his face. "The kind of thing people in your sector can't afford and wouldn't do if they could," she clarified bluntly, and he couldn't deny that.

"It was out almost before it started," the captain of the Guard said, walking over to them. He gave Dean a grim look; he'd been in charge the day Adam kicked off at Ellua's boarding house. "This doesn't look good for your lad, Winchester. It started in his rooms."

To say that it didn't look good was an understatement of frightening proportions. If Adam was found to be responsible for this fire, then the next logical step was to look at him in connection with all the others. Dean thought – _hoped_ – that he could prove most of the fires in his sector couldn't have been committed by his younger brother, simply due to the distances involved, but that still left this fire and the others in the Wrights-and-Smiths Sector. Which was a very wealthy sector, full of residents who would expect the culprit to be punished hard for his crimes and who had the money and influence to see that it happened.

Something of what he was thinking had to be reflected in his expression, because he could see the rough sympathy on the Guard Captain's face and concern in Marisa's, and Castiel was suddenly gripping his shoulder hard.

"Nothing is yet proven," Castiel said urgently. "Let us examine the evidence and speak to him first."

"He's here?" Dean asked the Captain. _Please let him be here …_

"We've got him in the dean's office," the Captain said, to Dean's relief. "I'll say this for him, he didn't try to run off. And he's got a friend with him who's willing to swear he couldn't have done it, although how much value we can put on that, I don't know."

"So let's find out," Marisa said.

 

xXx

 

At Castiel's request, they took a look in Adam's room first.

The dormitory was very basic; the room was smaller even than the one Adam had occupied at Ellua's boarding house, and like Castiel's room at the Heralds' Collegium it held nothing more than a narrow bed, a chair, a very small desk and a single shelf. There was no fireplace.

The bed frame was tipped on its side, facing the wall, and it was clear that the fire had been started underneath it. The straw-filled mattress pad, sporting a sizeable blackened patch in its centre third, had been dragged out into the hallway and soaked with water. There was a soot-blackened patch on the wooden floorboards, partly obscured by a heap of sand, and some scorching of the bed frame. It was all very neat and small, and there was no obvious source of ignition. Castiel immediately crouched down bedside the pile of sand and poked through it carefully, but found nothing. It was Dean who found a tiny smear of sulphur on the ledge of the narrow window.

"It came in through the window," Castiel commented in Jkathan.

"I guess." Dean stared at the bed frame. "Didn't do a very good job compared to the other fires, though."

"Perhaps … although the weak appearance adds credibility to the notion that your brother set this, you realise. It gives the impression of a diversion, as though he tried to set himself up as a victim but lacked the nerve to make it look truly convincing – "

"Aw, ain't this sweet!"

Dean's head jerked up. "What's he doing here?"

Guardsman Pyote was standing in the doorway, peering around ostentatiously and grinning as though Spring Festival had come early. Herald Marisa was some way down the passage, talking to a couple of Adam's neighbours, but Captain Rohsen was just inside the door and he turned to look at Pyote in surprise. It was clear from his expression that he'd never seen the man before, which wasn't really a surprise – this was far outside the Water Street Guard's jurisdiction and the Palace Guard was probably well outside even Pyote's dubious sphere of influence.

"Yes, Guardsman? Is there something you wanted?"

Pyote ignored him with his usual breathtaking level of arrogance, and even as he instinctively bristled, at the back of his mind Dean had to wonder just how sure Pyote was of his patrons and protectors that he could be confident of treating an unknown Palace Guard Captain so cavalierly.

Then Pyote grinned maliciously at Dean, and any speculation about him fled.

"Now _this_ is a sight to make your daddy proud," he jeered. "They do say it's the rotten apples that fall closest to the tree!"

"Dean!"

Dean didn't realise he'd moved until he felt Castiel's hand gripping his arm tightly. His breathing was shallow and he had the weirdest feeling that the floor had tilted slightly under his feet.

"Dean, don't give him the satisfaction!" Castiel warned him urgently. He switched to Valdemaran. " _Kapitane_ , this man has no business being here. He is a guardsman from the lower city."

Captain Rohsen's eyes flicked over the two of them before he turned his attention back to Pyote, and when he spoke his tone was sharp. "Guardsman, I asked you a question. What's your business here?"

Pyote jerked his chin at Dean, still displaying discoloured teeth in a nasty grin. "Him's the one you should be asking the questions of," he said insolently. "Ask him about his mammy and step-mammy, and his daddy getting run out of town. Ask him about the fires and daddy's poppy habit."

Castiel's restraining hands had to be leaving savage bruises on Dean's arms now. "Not one word, Dean," he rasped in Dean's ear. "Say _nothing._ "

There was tension in the line of the Palace Guard Captain's back that hadn't been there moments before. Very stiffly, Rohsen said, "That's enough, Guardsman. Wait for me downstairs. I'll want to speak to you when I'm done here."

Pyote sketched him a sloppy, mocking salute and turned to go, chuckling to himself. He almost ran down Marisa in the passage, but he paused only long enough to give her a loose-mouthed leer before slouching off.

Marisa gave no reaction to this other than a slight downward twitch of her lips, but her expression showed that she'd heard.

"I've seen enough here, gentlemen," she said, and her eyes tracked over Dean guardedly for a moment. "I think it's best we settle this now, one way or another. Let's go speak to the boy."

 

xXx

 

Adam was in the office of the Dean of the Unaffiliated students. This man was Nedric Trevel, the former head of the Stonemasons Guild, and it had occurred to Dean, back when he'd first arranged for his brothers to attend the Collegia, that Trevel had a thankless job. Probably being dean of any of the Collegia was a tough call, but the Unaffiliates – known informally as the Blues, because of their uniform - were a particularly disparate bunch, from a broad spread of backgrounds and with a wide variety of reasons for being there, and discipline could be a difficult issue. While there were certainly consequences for bad behaviour by any student who hoped to be accepted into a particular trade following training, in the case of the highborn students – who had neither the need nor the intention of taking up a trade – there was very little the teachers could do within their classrooms, which meant that they could get away with quite a lot.

Personally, Dean wouldn't have wanted to cross Trevel, but he wasn't a teenaged blue-blood with a pocket full of gold crowns and a parent on the High Council. The gods alone knew what Trevel had to put up with from the kind of little shits Dean regularly pulled out of public fountains and liquor dens in the lower city.

And then there was Adam, of course. In the wider scheme of things, being busted for taking yipweed and causing affray when his weed got spiked was probably a fairly mundane happenstance from Trevel's point of view. That said, he was a man cut from much the same cloth as Dean's former mentor Bobby Singer; he had been born and brought up in one of the roughest districts of Haven and was largely a self-made man. He didn't have much patience for the kind of stupid high-jinks some of the students got up to, and he tended to be harder on the working class youths in his care simply because he expected them to know better than their over-moneyed and sheltered higher-born classmates. It was an attitude Dean had some sympathy with; he didn't expect highborn kids to know how to behave out in the streets either.

Setting a fire in one of the dormitory rooms took things to a different and much more serious level, though, so it came as no surprise to find Trevel effectively standing guard over Adam and another boy, with his face set in the most forbidding lines Dean had ever seen.

The surprise - to Dean at least - was Adam's reaction when he saw his brother walk through the door. He was out of his chair and barrelling past Trevel before the man could stop him, and Dean was astonished by Adam throwing himself into his arms. During their turbulent childhood, there had been a few occasions when Sam had hugged him, but Dean couldn't remember a single instance of Adam doing so. Their father had done such a thorough job of instilling a suspicion of Dean in his youngest son that Adam had often been reluctant even to speak to him, let alone touch him.

"Dean, I didn't do it, I didn't, I swear," he was mumbling into Dean's tunic, and it sounded like he was about to burst into tears.

"Hey …" Dean squeezed his shoulder cautiously. "It's alright, we're going to sort this out."

"That remains to be seen," Trevel said, and his frown wasn't encouraging. Then he saw Herald Marisa with Captain Rohsen and his bushy eyebrows twitched upwards. "Is a Herald needful for this?"

"The Captain and I are agreed that this is a serious charge," Marisa said smoothly, "and if the Winchester lad _isn't_ responsible, then it's best for all concerned to establish that straightaway. There are enough rumours flying around as it is. If everyone is agreed?"

Trevel chewed this over for a moment, looking doubtful. "Truth-Spell's a serious thing, all the same," he said finally, glancing at Dean.

Truth-Spell? Then it dawned on Dean why Castiel had dragged Marisa into this. As a trainee, of course, he wouldn't be allowed to use it – if they had even shown him how yet, which was unlikely. But Marisa was a full Herald and, moreover, a Special Messenger with unusual discretionary powers. She could make that call if she chose.

"A charge of arson, even a minor one, is a serious matter," Marisa replied. She looked at Dean, her expression hard to read. "You're the boy's guardian – do you agree to this?"

For a split second Dean felt a qualm – what if the demon _was_ using Adam? Could Truth-Spell uncover that? What if it did? But Adam was already pulling out of his grip and saying "I want to."

"You sure?" Dean asked him warily, but Adam was nodding vehemently, no hint of doubt in his face. "Alright then …"

He looked at Marisa, and she nodded and indicated that he should step aside, leaving Adam standing in the middle of the room in front of her.

Dean had only seen Truth-Spell used once before, and that had been a demonstration during his Watch training. It was almost never used outside of the courts in the lower city, simply because Heralds so rarely got involved in anything happening down there. Marisa had to be good at it though: one moment Adam simply stood facing her, and the next a faint blue glow was settling over his head and shoulders.

She was direct too. "Did you set the fire under your dormitory bed this afternoon, Adam?"

"No ma'am – Herald," he replied, pale but steady.

The glow didn't so much as flicker, and some of the tension seeped out of Dean's muscles.

"Where were you when it happened?" Marisa continued.

"I was studying with Elric – " Adam nodded at the other boy, who was watching, wide-eyed. "We went to the Record House after the noon-meal."

The Record House was an old library somewhere on the campus that Dean vaguely recalled Sam telling him about; it had been a fee-paying library at some point, until the palace complex had expanded and absorbed it, and now it was popular as a study place for the Unaffiliated students.

"And were you there all afternoon?"

"Until the fire-bell sounded."

Marisa looked at Elric. "Can you corroborate that?" The blue glow of the spell transferred to his shoulders without missing a beat, but the boy confirmed Adam's story without hesitation.

"Well, that would seem to resolve that," Marisa commented to no one in particular, and she dismissed the spell.

There was an awkward pause, then Adam was stammering out his relief and gratitude, but all Dean could think was that there was some kind of undercurrent going on between Marisa, Captain Rohsen and Castiel, and he didn't know what it was but he didn't like the feel of it. The dean was aware of it too; he was looking from face to face and he wasn't happy.

"That's all very well," he said, "but that doesn't tell me who set that fire. That room was locked from the inside. Are we dealing with a rogue FireStarter here, or something else?"

It took Dean a moment to realise that Trevel was referring to someone with a FireStarting _gift_ – the Gifted weren't something he dealt with very often. Life in the Strangers Quarter was more mundane.

"I'm beginning to think that might be the case," Captain Rohsen replied after a moment. "I need to take another look at that room, though, because there are other ways to set a delayed fire, as I'm sure you're aware. But these boys can go now, it's clearly nothing to do with them."

"Winchester, come and see me after supper," Trevel said gruffly to Adam. "I'll find you somewhere to bunk down until your own room's cleaned up."

"Oh, that's alright, Sir, I can stay with – "

"You'll do as the dean says," Dean interrupted him, and he met Adam's rebellious eyes squarely. "In case you've forgotten, kiddo, you're not off the hook for the other stuff."

The look Adam gave him in response to this told him they were right back to where they'd always been with each other. But then the boy remembered his audience – and Captain Rohsen in particular, no doubt – and he shut his mouth. The hunch of his shoulders said what he thought of his brother's intervention, but he nodded a sullen agreement.

Dean sighed inwardly. He hadn't really expected much else, but … "Right, if that's everything, then I really need to get back to my Watch." Actually, he really needed to get back to the Roadhouse Inn first. Surrounded by other people's pristine uniforms, he was uncomfortably conscious of his own wrinkled and filthy clothing. He looked at Rohsen. "Will you let me know if you find out what caused the fire?" Dean would like nothing better than to hear that the fire was caused by a Gifted kid with control issues, but he seriously doubted that would happen. Still, it was the right thing to say.

"Of course," Captain Rohsen said politely.

"I'll be in touch too," Herald Marisa said.

Dean shot her a wary look, but her expression gave him no clues. "Alright … well, you know where to find me, I guess. Cas, is that ride back to my sector still on offer?"

Castiel was standing in the doorway; Trevel's office wasn't big enough to allow everyone inside. He inclined his head to Dean, his expression as opaque as Marisa's and Rohsen's. "Of course."

 

xXx

 

But they didn't head back to the stable yard. Without Dean being quite sure how it happened, Castiel steered him back across the palace grounds, through a series of doors and passages, until they ended up at his room in the Heralds Collegium. Dean was across the threshold and the door shut firmly behind the two of them before he could muster a proper protest.

"Cas, what the hell! I have to get back to the Watch House – "

"That will have to wait," Castiel said flatly.

Dean stared at him in disbelief. "Are you kidding me? What the hell is this about? Come on, man, I don't have time for this shit, it's bad enough that Adam – "

"Shut up."

The order was mild but not without a certain force behind it, and Dean's mouth snapped shut reflexively. Then he saw Castiel's expression and his mind seemed to freeze up. Whatever that look meant, he didn't believe it boded any good for him.

Castiel gestured to his bunk. "Please sit down."

Dean managed to wrench his lips apart. "No. You tell me what the fuck is going on here."

"I rather think that you owe that particular explanation to _me_." Castiel pulled the chair out from under his desk and settled it in a spot that handily prevented Dean making any escape attempt that didn't involve climbing over him. "Sit _down_ , Dean. You're not going anywhere until we've had this conversation, I promise you."

"Isn't kidnap kind of unethical for a Herald?"

"You know, in our brief acquaintance you've made extensive use of that particular kind of verbal obfuscation. Until now it suited me not to challenge you, as I'm sure it's a very useful technique in your profession, but as we're going nowhere until you tell me what I want to know, it would be to your advantage to abandon it now."

Dean gave him a smile that was no smile at all. "I'm a simple man, Cas. You're going to have to repeat that for me in words of one syllable."

Castiel was unmoved. "Sit down."

There was a long pause during which they stared at each other and Dean tried to calculate the odds of him fighting his way out of the room. From the look on Castiel's face, he knew exactly what Dean was thinking and wasn't remotely concerned by it. That kind of confidence might be a bluff of course, but Dean didn't think Castiel did bluffing.

"Fine!" he snapped, and he sat down on the edge of the bunk.

"Thank you," Castiel said mildly, and he sat on the chair facing Dean.

For a moment or two they stared at each other, then Dean gave in. "You gonna tell me what this is all about?" he demanded.

"No," Castiel said blandly. "You are going to tell me."

"Tell you _what?_ "

"All of the things you haven't told me since the day we met, Dean." Dean opened his mouth, outraged, but Castiel hadn't finished. "I'm not accusing you of lying to me, but you haven't told me the truth either. I let it be at first, because I was sure you would eventually trust me enough to tell me, but we don't have the luxury of time anymore. I need to know the things you've been holding back. I need to know what you're so afraid of."

Dean's throat was suddenly very dry. "I haven't been holding anything back."

"That _is_ a lie," Castiel said sharply.

"What is it you think I'm not telling you?" Dean demanded hotly, but he could feel sweat breaking out all over his body.

"Your fears about the real target of the _garuya_ for a start," Castiel said. His blue eyes were boring into Dean's. "When you awoke earlier and I told you of the fire, you immediately jumped to the conclusion that Adam had been attacked – but you also didn't think he was the real target. Why was that?"

Dean flashed back to his dream, but there was no way he was going to tell Castiel about _that_ – it was a dream, after all, and – what the hell? A dream giving him clues, how stupid was that? He wasn't a ForeSeer, and he sure as hell didn't believe in gods giving him advice in his dreams. He wasn't sure he believed in gods, _period_.

"Do you realise how that looks?" Castiel asked him, when the silence had stretched out for too long. "Dean, has it occurred to you that if your brother _was_ a diversion – and that certainly seems likely to me after what I saw in his room – then the real target may in fact be you?"

Dean couldn't help it; he snorted. "Cas, I can say with absolute certainty that I'm _not_ the guy who went to those priests at the Stonepickers Row temple and begged them for help. Ain't no boggle or ghostie been trying to take _my_ body for a ride, I promise you."

"And yet almost all of the fires have happened in an area around you, or have links to places or people that are of concern to you. If Adam was a diversion, then the original target may have been as well – or, more accurately, a lure to bring you into the demon's orbit."

"That is the craziest thing I've ever heard – "

"Actually, it would make a great deal of sense."

Dean stared at him in disbelief. "What the fuck makes sense in that?"

Castiel was unmoved by his growing agitation. "You're not a weak man, Dean, but you have secrets and flaws just like anyone else. You have two brothers who depend upon you, whom you would do anything to protect. Also, you live on a very fine edge, where any one of a number of possible events could destroy your life and put you in a very vulnerable position. This demon, the demon Roe Damia named Azazel? It is more intelligent than the average _garuya_ of its class, and consequently more malevolent. It likes to play games with its prey, because it can feed upon the fear and panic and confusion its target feels as it closes in."

"I'm not afraid of it!"

"But you are afraid of exposure. That Guardsman – Pyote? – hinted at a family scandal, and your reaction was very telling." Castiel paused a beat. "Captain Rohsen took note of it too."

"Pyote don't know jackshit about my family." Dean had to squeeze the words out through lips that suddenly felt numb.

"He said that your father got run out of town. What did he mean by that?"

"Nothing."

"Dean." Castiel's voice was gentle but insistent. "I heard enough comments in the Strangers Quarter to know that it's hardly 'nothing'. I can tell just from the look on your face now. This is poisoning you."

"Cas …" Despite his best efforts to control himself, Dean felt his lip quiver. "You don't understand, that's stuff I don't touch. Sam and Adam don't really know – I never even told Bobby all of it."

"You need to tell someone, Dean. If I'm right and Azazel has targeted you, it could literally kill you to keep it unsaid." Castiel hesitated, then added softly, "I would hope that you consider me a friend. Let me share this burden."

Something inside Dean crumpled up. "Yeah, what the hell," he mumbled. "Why not."


	5. Chapter 5

Dean had been born in a village called Dell's Crossing, close to the southern border. 'Crossing' did not refer to the crossroads that would normally be signified by such a place name; the crossing in question was a ford over the small, fast-running river Dell that flowed south into Rethwellan. The village lay in the fringes of a large forest and the main business of the families there was logging and other woodland professions.

"Not a big place," Dean commented, "maybe a little over three hundred people, twenty or so families. All from the old country." Jkathan, in other words, and refugees from religious persecution. "According to the stories, they starting walking and didn't stop till they found a place that didn't give 'em the stinkeye for worshipping Keirnys _and_ Bel."

The various families had made their way north over the course of twenty years or more, and Dean's grandparents were among the last to leave the old village in eastern Jkatha. Those left behind had been ethnically and religiously different. His father, however, had arrived much later and alone, and had allegedly come from a different town in the same region. Other than that, no one seemed to know who he was, what had happened to _his_ people (if anyone in Dell's Crossing had actually known who they were) or why he had left Jkatha. All Dean's grandfather had told him was that Jon hadn't been from their own community. He'd been allowed to stay in Dell's Crossing because of his exceptional skills as a woodsman and tracker.

And Dean's mother, Mary, had taken a fancy to him.

"I don't think Grandpa was all that keen on Dad, but Mom was his only surviving daughter and he let her have her way," Dean commented. "And it worked out – well, at first anyway."

Dean had been born a little over a year and a half into his parents' marriage, then his mother miscarried several times before Sam was born six years later. This was nothing particularly unusual for a border village with no proper healer, only a couple of midwives and herbalists who trained the old way – by learning from their parents. But by the time Sam arrived, Jon and Mary's relationship was fraying a little; again, nothing unusual as far as Dean himself could tell from the distance of time and perspective. "Life's tough on the border, and Dad was gone a lot – nature of the work, I guess. But Mom had worked in the forest herself before I was born and she chafed a bit at being stuck at home with the kids, or so Grandma said. Plus Dad wasn't always in a hurry to come home, that was the kind of guy he was. Still, they rubbed along all right I guess."

Sam was six months old when disaster first struck their family.

"It was pretty late in the year, not far off Midwinter. Dad had come home a couple of nights before – he and Mom had an argument, but then they were over it and everything was fine. He and one of the other men had managed to spear a wild pig, and I remember them talking about smoking their share so we could have pork for our Midwinter dinner." Dean stopped for a moment, and Castiel could see that he wasn't seeing the walls of his bedchamber anymore or the man he was talking to. He was looking at something in the past.

"I remember Mom putting me to bed that night. I dream about it sometimes. She put an extra blanket on my bed and told me the angels were watching over me. Then I went to sleep and when I woke up, it was the middle of the night, Dad was shouting, and the house was full of smoke."

Dean stopped again. Swallowed.

"I can still smell that smoke. Every time there's a fire in the city, every time I smell smoke, I remember that fire. It was a log house, and I never really thought about it until recently – I mean, a wooden house, it's gotta burn easy, right? But it was nearly Midwinter and it'd been raining pretty much non-stop for weeks. And the smoke …"

"What about the smoke?" Castiel prompted him softly.

"Smelled wrong. Like someone had been striking flints. And the house went up like a torch. You ever seen a cremation?"

Of course he had – he'd sat through three only recently. Valdemar favoured a method where the pyre was built inside a stone crematorium. The pyre would be as much as five feet high and built over a stone pit also filled with kindling, and it was customary to soak the wood and kindling in combustible materials – pitch and oils, and often incense. The aim was to get a really fierce and prolonged burn that would reduce the body to ash and small fragments of bone, which then fell tidily into the pit below for collection and later interment in an urn. The analogy Castiel guessed Dean was making was the way in which the oils made funeral pyres turn to an inferno so quickly.

"I swear I don't know how we survived it. Dad got me up, gave me Sammy and told me to run outside. Then he went back in to try and save Mom, but it was too hot and he couldn't get to her. He had burns all up his arms, he never lost the scars." Another pause. Dean was still staring fixedly through the walls. "It was freezing cold at the edge of the clearing … I remember him hugging me and Sammy tight. I always remember that, because it was the last time he ever hugged me." Dean swallowed again sharply. "By morning the house was pretty much ash and rubble and nothing else, that's how fierce the fire was. I don't think there was much of Mom left to bury."

Even in a log house fire there could and probably _should_ have been a significant portion of the structure left, Castiel knew, especially if the building was wet from weeks of rain. It was less easy to say about a body, but he had seen the aftermath of terrifying tenement fires in Throne City where carbonised bodies had still been recovered.

And there was another question that had to be asked.

"How did your mother come to be left in the house? If there was time for you and your brother to escape, and your father, why did she not also run?"

Dean shook his head. "I don't know," he muttered. "I never even heard her scream. If they hadn't found … bones … I would have thought she wasn't in there at all."

That was bad. And if he, Castiel, could think that, over eighteen years later and with no personal connection to the event, then he could well imagine what the villagers of Dell's Crossing must have thought at the time, especially if Jon Winchester was mostly an outsider in their community. He was starting to get a feel for the tragedy that had engulfed the Winchesters, but this was just a part of it, and much as he hated to do it -

"What happened next, Dean?"

Dean's hands, which had been lying limply in his lap, suddenly clenched. "Next is when it all started to go to shit."

 

xXx

 

There were mutterings in the village about the fire, even though Jon swore that he didn't know how it had started, the kitchen fire had been properly banked, there had been no tallow dips left burning, nothing of that sort. The comments had been enough that one of the community's charcoal-burners had been brought out of the forest to examine the remains of the house and offer an opinion as to how it had happened. He'd been able to confirm that he could find no evidence of deliberate foul play – nothing to suggest that the house had been treated with a dangerous material, or that anything like oil, pitch or even wax had been used as an accelerant. He hadn't even been able to find exactly where the fire started. The best he could offer – and this had been corroborated by the most knowledgeable person in the village, the _Gar-gello_ of their temple – was that there had been some very unusual weather systems at the time and odd, isolated forms of lightning were not impossible.

"What of sulphur in the debris?" Castiel asked, but Dean shook his head.

"If there was, no one ever told me about it."

Jon, Dean and Sam went to live with Dean's grandparents at first. Jon threw himself into building a new home for them, in between doing his usual woodsman's work, and as a result Dean and Sam saw very little of their father. So the fact that Jon was holding himself aloof from his eldest son was initially only really apparent to Dean himself, and when he mentioned it his grandparents were quick to reassure him that he was misinterpreting it – Jon was very busy and very tired, he wasn't ignoring Dean at all, and if he paid more attention to Sam, well that was because Sam was just a baby.

"Basically, _you're a big boy now and Sammy needs Daddy more than you_ ," Dean said, smiling thinly. "And I bought that, I totally bought that I shouldn't bother him because he didn't have the time and energy to coddle me anymore."

With a lot of back-breaking work and the somewhat reluctant help of the other men in the village, the new house was mostly ready by late spring. By that point Jon was back on a reasonably even footing with everyone, or so it seemed – in retrospect what happened next, Dean admitted, was strongly suggestive of the other families' true feelings about him. Namely, that he could stay in the village but they weren't entirely inclined to trust him.

Again, with the perspective of time Dean could admit that it was obvious his father could never hope to live in that house and raise his two sons alone. His particular skills meant that the work he did took him away from home for days or weeks on end, and Sam wasn't yet a full year old. Had Mary died under more normal circumstances, a suitable unmarried woman in the village would have stepped in within a very short space of time; that was simply how things worked in rural villages just about anywhere. And there had been several younger women in Dell's Crossing at the time who were unmarried or widowed.

But Mary had died in a fire that couldn't be properly explained, and her husband had not been one of the village's own. However much the villagers sympathised with Jon's plight – and Dean didn't remember any lack of sympathy for him and Sam at least – no one stepped forward to help in this one crucial aspect.

"I guess I thought we'd just carry on living with Grandma and Grandpa," Dean said tiredly, "'cept that Dad didn't really get along with Grandpa. And to be honest, he was never the kind of guy to live without a woman, although I didn't understand that until I was a lot older."

It wasn't unusual for Jon to accompany the logging wagons to the sawmills in other settlements and villages on the outskirts of the forest – journeys like that could take weeks, and the wagons always needed someone on board who was handy with a bow in case of bandits. He made one such journey in the summer, and when he returned he had company - his new wife, Kate.

It came completely out of the blue. Dean had been furious about it.

"I was what – seven years old?" he said helplessly. "My mom hadn't been dead a year."   Something which hadn't gone down well with his grandparents or the villagers either. "And he hardly spoke to me or looked at me anymore. Then he comes home with this woman no one knows, who doesn't even speak the same language as us, and he spends all his time with her and Sammy. How did people expect me to act? I hated her."

And the feeling had been mutual. The family moved into the new house, and things went downhill from the first day.

"The longest conversation me and Dad had in months, and it pretty much started and finished with _You behave yourself and do as your mother tells you_. She wasn't my mother! But I said that and he – " Dean stopped again.

"What did he say?" Castiel asked softly.

"He smacked me across the face and knocked me down. He'd never hit me before. I was so shocked, I didn't even cry. Then he said "You'll show her some respect and do as you're told" and that was it, conversation over. He went off into the forest and I was stuck in a strange house with a strange woman I couldn't talk to. I mean, _literally_ I couldn't talk to her. I didn't speak Valdemaran, and she knew just one word of our language and that was _No_."

"How did she treat Sam?" Castiel asked.

"Oh, she was just fine with him. I mean, he was a cute baby, everyone loved him. And it wasn't like he was talking yet, so there were no communication problems for her. But me and her …" Dean sat for a moment, jaw tight. Then he said, shakily, "Look, Cas, I'm not trying to make out I was some little cherub. I treated Kate like shit from the start, I admit that, because she came out of nowhere and she was trying to take my mom's place. I'm not proud of that, but there it is. And it wasn't easy for her either, because she didn't speak the language and even with Grandma's help, people in the village didn't really accept her. But she didn't even _try_. There was no sympathy or understanding with her at all. Everything I did was wrong, she was screaming at me the whole time and I never even knew what she was screaming _about_. With Sammy she was fine, she loved him to bits, but me – if she wasn't shouting at me, she was watching me out of the corner of her eye the whole time, like she was waiting for me to poison the cat or something. And as soon as Dad got home, she'd be at him about me and then I'd really be in trouble."

He didn't elaborate on what kind of 'trouble' and Castiel didn't ask. He didn't need to.

"So then I started to think that if I was always in the wrong, then I might as well give them both a reason for laying into me."

It hadn't been hard to find trouble to get into. Kate made no attempt to prevent Dean running wild and the further away from the house he was, the better she was pleased.

"I was stealing from people's kitchens to eat because I didn't want to go home during the day." Dean snorted softly. "I think they let me get away with that, under the circumstances, but then I started taking other stuff – I lifted one of Dad's bows and used Ma Tesker's hen-house for target practice, and I picked up a hand axe somewhere … did some damage with that I guess. Next thing I know, Sol Wheelwright laid in wait, nabbed me and dusted my britches for me." For a moment a genuine smile lit Dean's face. "Definitely a 'more in sorrow than in anger' kind of thing, he was the gentlest guy really. And he took me to the temple and got the _Gar-gello_ to give me a talking to."

Castiel smiled. "Did you listen to him?"

Dean shrugged. "I guess, for all the good it did." His smile faded. "He gave Dad a lecture too, and that didn't go down too well."

It put Jon in a difficult position; his and Kate's negligence towards Dean was now public knowledge. In a small village, peer pressure was a very real force and the _Gar-gello_ had a lot of authority. Plus, no one wanted a young boy running loose in the forest – that was a sure route to tragedy. Dean had been making deeper and deeper incursions into the woods, and although the local Maenad had been keeping a discreet watch over him, she had her own duties and had duly alerted the _Gar-gello_ to the danger. Jon was told to do something about Dean, or else.

What he _might_ have done was open to question. "Probably what he did do, in the end," Dean said, resigned. But there was no denying that Kate had significant input into the final decision. She announced her pregnancy and made it quite clear to Jon that she had neither the energy nor the inclination to put up with Dean anymore. Sam and her own baby had to come first.

"After that, he went out for an hour or two," Dean said. "When he came back, he packed up my stuff and took me to my grandparents. And he left me there. When I asked Grandpa how long I was gonna stay with them, he hugged me and said that was my home now."

"Your father washed his hands of you," Castiel said softly.

"Yeah, I think that was the plan," Dean agreed.

 

xXx

 

As solutions went, it was probably the best that could be devised under the circumstances. It didn't endear Jon or Kate to the other villagers, though.

"You know, I sometimes think that if things hadn't gone the way they did, Dad and Kate would have left Dell's Crossing anyway," Dean mused. "Kate didn't ever really fit in and I can't believe that Dad didn't get shit for handing me off to Grandpa the way he did. Plus there was the stuff with Mom. I'm pretty sure Kate wanted to go, anyway, because she wanted to be nearer her own family – that was common knowledge. Sooner or later she would have talked him into it, I think."

"And you?"

Dean had been happy after a fashion. His grandparents loved him; his grandfather had easily brought him back into line, and Dean's natural gifts for woodcraft and archery – which had been noted and brought to his grandfather's attention by Roe Tallis – were encouraged. The only persistent sour note in his life was Jon and the rest of the family. Jon kept only minimal contact with Dean when his grandfather forced the issue, and Dean would probably have lost contact with Sam altogether without that intervention. Adam's birth placed further strain on matters. Kate didn't want Dean anywhere near the new baby.

"First time I saw him was at his naming ceremony. That caused a lot of trouble for them too," Dean said. "It wasn't held at the temple, because Dad wasn't a temple-goer and Kate's people were a different religion. The _Gar-gello_ went to the house and blessed Adam, but it wasn't a proper ceremony in front of the village, and that kind of shit didn't go down well, you know?"

"I'm surprised they were able to get away with it at all," Castiel remarked. "Small communities feel very strongly about these things."

"The atmosphere wasn't good, believe me. And I was only there because my grandparents just _went_ – they weren't invited. But Grandpa faced Dad down and said I had a right to see my brothers, and Grandma did her best to smooth everything over. Didn't really work though."

Even without Dean there, Jon and Kate's relationship began to sour. Dean overheard his grandparents discussing it more than once – it was an open secret in the village that they were quarrelling and people were more inclined to gossip when the couple involved were unpopular. Jon began to spend more time out in the woods and on the logging wagons, and the village women were quick to note that Kate didn't get pregnant again. And Jon was drinking.

"Although to be fair, I think he always did," Dean said, "and he had a pretty hard head for liquor."

Then, when Adam was just two years old, disaster struck again.

"Kate and Dad had a couple of really big rows – I never found out what that was about, but the first time people said she threw him out of the house. The second time, he supposedly took off on his own and didn't come back for a couple of weeks. When he did come back, he made things up with her and it caused a lot of talk because he was making a big deal about cleaning up his act. Dropping the liquor, treating her nice, making sure he wasn't away from the house for too long a stretch at a time. Everything was great between them."

"And then?" Castiel prompted.

The shadows that appeared in Dean's face then belonged to an older man. "Then one night the house caught fire."

"I didn't see what happened," he continued after a long moment's silence. "Grandpa and Grandma lived right over the other side of the village. But according to their neighbours, it was like Act Two of the fire that killed Mom, right down to Sammy getting Adam out of the house while Dad tried to rescue Kate."

"And did he rescue her?" Castiel asked.

"The blacksmith went in after him and they managed to drag her out, but she was already dead."

"What happened then?"

Silence. Dean was staring blindly at the opposite wall again, but Castiel was watching his hands: they were scrubbing restlessly on the tough canvas of his uniform trousers.

"Dean?"

"I guess it was one pack too many for that chirra."

"I'm sorry?"

Dean blinked and looked at Castiel. "What? Oh … sorry, it's a saying. Chirras are pack animals people use in the north. If you pile too much on their backs, they lie down until you lighten the load. The saying, it just means … well, I guess it means something's a little too much for folk to swallow, you know?"

"Ah. Too much of a coincidence that both of your father's wives should die in the same way?"

"Well, yeah. What would you think?"

What the most senior members of the village had thought was quite simple and obvious – that Jon had deliberately set the fire himself, most probably in the hope of ridding himself of at least Kate. Opinion was divided on whether or not Sam and Adam had also been targets, although the majority seemed to think not. Jon had protested in vain and the scene, mediated by the _Gar-gello_ , had been an ugly one.

"Why was outside assistance not sought?" Castiel asked. "The past few weeks have made it clear to me that this sort of situation is _exactly_ the kind that Heralds exist to manage!"

"Cas, Heralds aren't always on hand, there just aren't enough of them," Dean said unsteadily. "Dell's Crossing is miles from nowhere, like the end of the world, right off the beaten track. I never saw a single Herald or a Guard in all the time I lived there. We weren't on a circuit for anyone, we got all our news from the outside from one of the sawmills on the edge of the forest, and if something went wrong .... Look, we weren't the only village like that, there were places in the forest all along that border that went months at a time without seeing anyone from the outside. There were stories about villages that got the plague and everyone died, and no one knew about it until somebody thought "Heyla, we haven't seen their wagons this season, maybe someone should go check on them!" And they'd find nothing left but empty log houses and a few long-dead bodies. Getting a Herald to sort out our mess was never gonna happen. As far as the village was concerned, it was cut and dried."

"What explanation did your father give?"

Dean sighed. "You gotta be able to guess what he said by now, Cas."

"He told them it was a fire demon?"

"Yeah. He broke down and gave the _Gar-gello_ a long story about his family being targeted by it, and that was how he came to be in Valdemar on his own, but it had followed him. Well, you can imagine how well that went down with everyone."

"If he had never told anyone that story before in, what, eleven years or thereabouts? I cannot imagine it was well received," Castiel commented.

"Understatement. Even the _Gar-gello_ cried bullshit. But the thing was – they couldn't actually _prove_ he'd done it. There was no clear ignition point and no explanation for how the fire had got out of control so quickly. And he did try to save Kate, even the blacksmith admitted that. If they'd been able to prove he'd set the fire, I think they would have hung Dad from the nearest tree then and there, but without proof the _Gar-gello_ wouldn't hear of it." Dean took a deep breath. "So they told him he had to take his littles and leave. Rip it out, root and branch, like people still say in the Strangers Quarter when shit like this happens."

"Even you?"

"No, that's the weird thing. Grandpa spoke up and said him and Grandma was keeping me, and for that matter they'd take in Sammy and Adam too, because they shouldn't be punished for what Dad had done. Most folk were fine about me staying at least, but Dad went nuts and said no way – if they were throwing him out then they couldn't have any of his littles either, and they'd be glad one day that he'd taken me. And no, I don't know what he meant by that."

"Did he ever accuse you of setting the fires?" Castiel asked bluntly.

"No. Not directly, anyway." Dean wiped his face with one hand, looking grey and exhausted. "Don't think I haven't wondered, though. Not that I did it, because I know I didn't, but that he thought I did. It's the only explanation that makes any sense of the way he treated me."

"Perhaps." Castiel pondered this for a while, before looking up at Dean again. "What happened then? Did you all come here to Haven?"

"I don't think Dad had any real idea of where to go at first," Dean said. "Maybe if we'd come straight here, things would have turned out a bit differently, I don't know. But we had to pass through the village where Kate's family had their holding and that's where the next lot of trouble started. I don't think Dad really wanted to stop there at all, but he had three younglings and hardly anything in the way of supplies. He was hunting along the way and we were foraging pretty much all of the time, but it was autumn and he needed a better plan. Plus … look, I don't want you to think he was a terrible person, Cas, even with everything he did to me. I think he felt he had to at least tell Kate's parents she was dead, because they didn't know and it was the decent thing to do. But that turned out to be a really bad move. They knew how Mom had died from back when he'd first met Kate, so when he told them that Kate had died the same way …" Dean winced.

"That was it – we had to leave that village pretty quick, and from then on it felt like wherever we went people already knew about us. Or we'd find somewhere, manage to stay for a while, and then someone would arrive in town who knew who Dad was and that was it, we'd be on the road again. In the end it was just easier to head for the city and hope we could get lost in the crowd."

"But the story followed you again."

"Yeah, but the gods only know how. When we arrived here, Dad started calling us Winchester - "

"Your family name is _not_ Winchester?" Castiel asked, surprised.

Dean smiled wryly. "Cas, we didn't _have_ a family name as such before we came to Haven. Dad was known as 'Jon the archer'." He said it the Jkathan way: _Jon a'Lancei_. "So me, Sammy and Adam were all called 'the archer's sons'."

"So your true name is Dean Lanceiro," Castiel said, deliberately pronouncing the name the way Dean had once told him the people of Dell's Crossing said it.

Dean shrugged. "If you like. Or Dean Archersson, that's what most Valdemarans would call me. That's the name I signed up to the Guard under when I was sixteen. Winchester was the name of some guy Dad ran into on his way to Valdemar, or so he said. Anyway, when we got here Dad managed to get some odd jobs - labouring and so on, day to day work. Not great but better than nothing. Then he got a month's work as a peacekeeper in a tavern, a seriously rough joint. Did good enough that the barkeep gave him a good character when he applied to the Watch. That's when we met Uncle Bobby - Bobby Singer - and that was the first serious piece of luck we had since Kate died. Bobby was …" Dean stopped for a moment, muscles bunching in his jaw. "Well, let's just say that Bobby was a better friend than Dad deserved. He helped him get a better place in the Watch than he would have on his own, and when the stories caught up with us again he was the first person to challenge them and ask what proof people had that Dad had done wrong."

"Is that how you came to join the Watch too?"

"In a roundabout kinda way. Law in Valdemar says you have to make sure your kids can read and write, but there's no common standard and not a lot of checks made in places like the villages and settlements on our border, so I never learned. Well, Dad enrolled Sam and Adam with the nearest temple when they were old enough, but I was nearly twelve when we got to Haven and he said I could get out there and start earning my keep. I still couldn't speak more than a handful of words of Valdemaran, so it was Bobby made him enrol me at the temple and Bobby who helped me learn the language. I did mornings in school then I worked at the Exile's Gate Watch House as a runner in the afternoons."

"And then?"

Dean shrugged. "Let's say my relationship with Dad didn't improve."

What wages Dean earned went into the family coffer, but he saw little benefit from them. What he got in return was a roof over his head at night and the barest minimum in the way of clothing and food, and he wasn't allowed to spend time with his brothers. With a little spare money in his pocket Jon had resumed drinking, although at first it was not excessive. Despite a rocky start, he did well in the Watch and in a relatively short space of time the men and women working with him came to trust him and his judgement, which eventually resulted in promotions. Unfortunately, this also put him in a position of authority over Dean.

Until that point, Dean had assumed he would join the Watch full-time himself when he was old enough, but a few months under his father's command killed that ambition. He was now nearly sixteen, still over two years away from full legal emancipation from his father, but he'd had enough. He forged Jon's signature on the paperwork and joined the Guard.

"How did he react when he found out?" Castiel asked curiously.

"From what I heard afterwards, he didn't, but I'm not sure how quick he realised I was gone. After he'd been a lieutenant about six months they moved him to the Ropewalk Watch, plus I didn't spend more time at home than I had to … Sammy told me a long time afterwards that he'd told Dad I wasn't coming home at night no more, but Dad didn't seem to care." Dean paused for a moment and his eyes shifted away from Castiel's. "So I went right through basic training, and it was all looking pretty good. Then one day - I think it was just before they were getting ready to ship us off to the border - he just turned up at the barracks. And he was … man, I hadn't seen him so pissed in years. The sergeant marched me out and asked me, kinda quiet, how old I was. I told him, I was eighteen. Stupid," Dean muttered, looking down at his hands. "I don't know what I thought he was gonna to do, with my dad standing right there. So then he asked me what I thought the law had to say to people who forged other people's signatures."

He looked up and gave Castiel a rueful smile. "And I knew the answer to that one, I'd been listening to section and paragraph of the law since I was twelve. So I told him - a maximum sentence of two years' army service."

Castiel laughed softly.

"Yeah, I think that's what Sarg wanted to do, underneath, but he couldn't 'cause Dad was standing right there looking like he was gonna bust a vein any minute. So instead he told me they didn't do that to underage first-time offenders, but I _was_ asking for a birching in the drill yard." Dean's smile slipped. "I'd have settled for that, instead of what he did do. He told me I was a damn idiot, and to come back when I was of age. And he sent me home with Dad."

"What did your father do?" Castiel asked, when the pause had gone on for too long.

Dean shrugged, his eyes slipping away again. "Screamed at me a hell of a lot."

If Castiel hadn't been watching for it, he might have missed the split second when Dean's mental shields failed under a sudden burst of stress. And once again he saw the stream of images ending with the one of a red-faced enraged man shouting terrible insults at his own son.

"Nothing new, I guess," Dean said. His face was perfectly calm, belying the appalling memories behind it. "'Cept when he tried to hit me this time, I caught his wrist and held him off. Don't know which of us was more surprised. I hadn't realised till then that I was as tall as him, and he was … he wasn't near as strong as I expected him to be."

"Why do you think that was? I assume he'd always been a strong man?"

"Sure. You don't work in the forests unless you're tough, Cas. I watched him string and draw bows as long as he was like they were nothing, he could handle an axe and fell trees, and spend three, four, five days tracking in the woods without more than catnaps and one meal a day. He walked everywhere, all his life. Nah, it was the drink that got him." Dean's face was bleak. "I got a good look at him that day and realised he was in trouble. Not bad trouble, not just then, but he was heading down the wrong road and there probably wasn't a damn thing I could do about it because he actually hated me and wasn't about to pay any attention to anything I said or did." He halted for a moment. Swallowed. "That's a shitty thing to say about my own dad, but there it is. He hated me."

"For what it's worth," Castiel told him carefully, "I have never seen any point in being anything less than honest about one's relationship with one's family, even if it's only to yourself. Which I admit is a less than ideal attitude and one which gave me much trouble as a priest. I could never bring myself to say I respected my father when I knew it was a lie."

"Did you hate him?" Dean croaked.

"No. I loved him, which was far worse. Had I even been indifferent to him, it might have been easier for me."

"Yeah."

 

xXx

 

Dean went back to the Watch and within a week of being formally enrolled he was back at the Exile's Gate Watch House with Bobby Singer. "Away from Dad, thank god. And I was mostly able to avoid him at home, since our shifts didn't match up much."

The family's problems began to stack up again within a year or so, but this time it was less dramatic, more drawn out … more subtle. All Dean knew was that there came a point where the old rumours suddenly seemed to be circulating again, quiet and insidious. Jon was now the senior lieutenant at the Ropewalk Watch, right in the middle of the Strangers Quarter where people from their own cultural background lived in a tight-knit community and nursed the old customs and beliefs. The one place in Haven where the rumours were most likely to do damage.

"I got an idea _who_ started them again," Dean told Castiel frankly. "Pyote."

"He is not a new problem then."

"Nah, he's been around a while," Dean said sourly. "He knew all about my crap with the Guard - " Castiel was startled by another sudden and unexpected mental flash, of the face of the young man Dean had become attached to during his brief period in the Guard. "And he knew about the stuff from back home and why we'd left there. And like he does, he talked. See, the thing with Pyote is no one takes him seriously. He talks shit everywhere and no one likes it. But for some reason it sticks worse than if someone more credible said it. Damned if I know why."

"Surely he is but one man …"

"Well yeah, but you gotta know what guys like him are like, Cas. There's never just _one_ like him, there's always plenty of 'em. He just happened to be the one who knew the dirt on us. And the rest of 'em spun it out, you know? So he'd say shit in a tavern and people would say "Go die in a ditch" and blow it off. Then they'd go home and maybe think "hmm". And a while later, someone else would bring it up again, and everyone would say "No way, man" but it was back in front of them again. And sometimes it'd come back from people who seem real credible - like Bela Talbot."

"Bela Talbot?" Castiel asked, puzzled.

"Captain Talbot of the Glassblower Alley Watch," Dean said grimly. "She joined the Watch about the same time as me, but she had way better contacts and got on a lot quicker. She wanted me to tell her all about it, give her the 'true story'. Thing is, with Bela there's never a safe option. Tell her or don't tell her, she'll find a way to use it against you. I opted not to tell her." Dean shrugged. "'Least that way Dad couldn't say I'd been shooting my mouth off about our business. But the talking behind his back got him down, and he was dipping deeper and deeper with the drink. By the time I was, what, maybe twenty? I was pretty much feeding Sammy and Adam and making sure they had everything they needed. He didn't neglect them exactly, but it took most of his effort to manage the job and any attention they got from him was on the good days. And after a while there were fewer and fewer of those … maybe you know how that goes."

"Anecdotally, but yes," Castiel said sympathetically.

Dean shrugged that off. "Well hell, it wasn't like we were the only ones. Functioning drunks are five a penny in the lower city, and there's plenty of 'em in the Watch. I don't tolerate it in my Watch House, and neither does Bobby, but I could tell you a few tales about some of the others. Never mind that."

Jon managed to hold himself together tolerably well for a couple of years. As Dean said, alcoholism was far from unknown in the Watch. A condition that would have earned him reprimands and potentially a dishonourable discharge from the Guard was merely shrugged at by senior Watch Officers, who only saw a need to take action if it affected a Watch officer's performance. In most cases, the relevant Captain would intervene and discipline a man as necessary. But in Jon's case, he had by that time already attained the captain's rank and it enabled him to hide his problems to a certain extent. That he drank was known to those both above and below him. That it was becoming a problem was largely hidden.

"I don't know exactly when they realised it was affecting his work," Dean said. "All I know is I was suddenly called in by the District Commander and told I was being transferred to the Ropewalk Watch to take over one of the three shifts. By that time I was a lieutenant and I'd been posted at the Pieman's Yard Watch in the Granary District for about six months. I didn't see Dad or my brothers so much because the Granary District's a fair way from the Strangers Quarter - I was bunking with one of the constables and coming home every restday. By that time Dad was renting some rooms from Yola Blue; she's a dressmaker in Threadneedle Street. I think Dad had dual arrangements with her, if you get my meaning, but she's a good person and she kept an eye on Sam and Adam for him.

"Anyway, I joined the Ropewalk Watch and that's when I found out just how bad things were with Dad. The other two lieutenants were both pretty much tearing their hair out, especially Raksen who was really past retirement age and just not up to dealing with the shit that was going down anymore. He quit in the first month I was there, along with three of the junior constables, and two of the senior constables applied for transfers to different Watches. That's when Henryks was transferred in, along with Olivia and Murgo. Out of the old crew only Rufus and Jed are still with us. Then I caught the second lieutenant, Anderval, taking protection money from local prostitutes and it turned out that wasn't all he was doing. Damned if he didn't try to blackmail me on account of the state Dad was in." A bitter smile crossed Dean's lips. "That was the only good thing that happened, because it was almost worth it to see his face when I told him District Command already knew about Dad. Almost worth it, anyway."

Dean sagged a little. "He got thrown out of the Watch there and then, of course, and we had months afterwards of picking him up for all sorts of shit – beating up on his wife and daughters was the worst, though. One day he went too far and the oldest girl – hell, she was only about fourteen – well, she grabbed an iron skillet and started hitting him back until he went down and didn't get up again. That was ugly."

"But your father," Castiel prompted him.

Dean took a deep breath. "They told me his decision-making had become odd and erratic, and they were worried about personnel problems that seemed to be happening with increasing regularity. They said because I was his son, they wanted me in there to see if I could get to the bottom of it and fix it if I could. Nobody wanted to have to take official action against Dad, he had a good service history, blah blah blah. I mostly bought that because I thought maybe he was just drinking too much and they were sympathetic about it because, hell, being Captain of a Watch ain't no walk in the park, you know? Not that I knew what the hell I could do about it, but it wasn't like I had much choice, so I went along with it. Only it was a lot worse than I thought.

"First day I got there, I had to report to him; that's standard procedure. I presented myself at the desk and the sergeant – that was Rolina, she was a good officer – she said I'd have to report to Lieutenant Raksen. So I asked where Dad was, because I knew he was supposed to be on duty, and she got twitchy and said she'd get Raksen."

The situation Dean had walked into was one no one could have prepared him for. His father was turning up for duty, but then disappearing for much of his shift – often out into the streets, leaving any officer he happened to pass on his way out 'in charge', no matter how junior they might be. But just as often he would go into his office, lock the door, and not come out again for hours. Or he might come out and start prowling the Watch House … and that was worse. His mood was changeable and all the worse, somehow, for his temper being seemingly mild; any constable encountering him during one of these moods could expect at the least a reprimand for some perceived fault, either in their uniform or their manner, and more likely the docking of their pay. Dean and Henryks started front-of-shift inspections in an attempt to anticipate and correct anything that might attract the more egregious criticisms, but it was like sharing the building with a crocodile that might lie in wait before snapping unpredictably.

By this time Sam was sixteen and had begun studying at the Collegia, while returning home every other weekend; Adam was fourteen and preparing to join him, but at this point Jon was still keeping his youngest son firmly at home under his eye. Dean had no choice during this period but to return to live with his father and Adam, as he didn't yet earn enough to pay for separate lodgings _and_ contribute to the family income. Jon wasn't at home much, but Adam, absorbing his father's attitude towards his older brother, was surly and difficult.

Some issues were immediately apparent to Dean, above and beyond the problems with his father's behaviour at the Watch House.

"He had no money," Dean told Castiel. "I'm not saying a Watch Captain's wage is good enough to live the high life, but you've seen me and I get by, even subbing Sam and Adam most of the time. But I was feeding the three of us – and Sam when he was at home - _and_ paying the rent when Yola got pissed off with Dad. Most of the time he didn't actually pay her at all, but he was sleeping with her and she usually let it slide. So where the hell was the money going? He wasn't drinking _that_ much that I could see."

"When we first met I remember you telling me that your father only saw demons at the end of his pipe," Castiel commented, and Dean nodded.

"Yeah, exactly. But I didn't know _then_ that he was smoking poppy gum; I didn't go into his room and I didn't touch his stuff. Or not until it was too late, anyway."

"Surely an opium habit should have ended your father's career?"

"You'd think. But all they did was draft me in and tell me to sort him out." Dean let out a bitter laugh. "Yeah, right."

"He can't have reached a level of the habit that took all his money so quickly," Castiel said. "I know very little about it, admittedly, but is it so very expensive?"

"More expensive here than it would be back in the old country," Dean said. "Opium poppies don't grow so easy here, and growing enough of 'em to make it worthwhile would be difficult when people like Heralds are doing regular circuits around the kingdom. That's why stuff like yipweed is so popular. It grows just about anywhere – I've known people grow it in old pots next to their window – and most of the plant can be dried and smoked. Most opium is imported legally for medicines, or smuggled, and that drives the price up."

"I see."

"But it wasn't just the drink or the opium." Dean sighed. "Some of it I didn't find out till later, but – turned out some fake soothsayer got his hooks into Dad. You know it's illegal to tell fortunes in Valdemar without official oversight?"

"I didn't, but I assumed the lack of fortune-tellers and the like in Haven was part of the ban on magic."

"If you can prove you have the Gift of ForeSight, you're golden," Dean explained. "Supposedly most ForeSeers are Heralds anyway, but now and again you'll get someone who can predict weather or the sex of babies, that kind of thing, and they're allowed to do it so long as someone designated by the Crown keeps an eye on them. Usually that's a local priest, or the proctor of your sector here in the city. You're not allowed to charge a fee for doing it, and if you're caught taking payment the Crown will find something useful for you to do where you can't make a nuisance of yourself. And if you're caught making up predictions, the fines are high enough to make your eyes water." Rather sourly, he added, "Funnily enough, that doesn't stop the fakes, but they get dead canny about it. It's not illegal to pretend to receive messages from gods or from the dead, for example, and you can make and sell all the talismans you like. Palm reading and reading tealeaves is seen as folk custom and mostly winked at. And there's a grey area around the kind of playing cards and board games that are supposed to tell the future – you can play 'em, but you aren't supposed to put money on it. Since most of those can be played as straight games as well, in practice you can't get a judge to convict, but if it causes a punch-up then sometimes you can call it disturbing the peace and lock the players in the stocks for a day."

"And there will always be those who will take the risk and promote themselves as fortune-tellers regardless of the law," Castiel noted.

"Exactly. So this guy who got a hold on Dad had heard all the rumours and basically told him he believed all this stuff about a demon. I'm not even gonna speculate on how he got Dad to listen to him in the first place, but somehow he did it and by the time me and Sammy finally searched Dad's room, he had talismans hanging off every corner and symbols painted on the floor and walls in some crap the guy told him would make the runes more powerful."

"Some symbols and substances can be used to genuine effect," Castiel said gently. "Much of the work I do relies upon precisely that sort of defence."

Dean scowled. "Yeah, well, whether it would have worked or not, the fact is he spent a mint on this stuff and the guy just encouraged Dad to be more and more paranoid. He drank, he smoked poppy and he had visions of the demon, until he didn't know what was real and what wasn't. Come the end he was passing out under his desk for most of his shifts, and it was me and Henryks, and then Jody too, holding everything together. I _told_ District Command what was happening – hell, if it had just been me having to cover for him, I guess I might have dealt with it, but it wasn't fair on everyone else in the Watch House. But Command didn't want to know. I got a Healer to try and help him, and you don't want to know what I had to do to find the money for that – Bobby damn near tore strips off me when he found out – but Dad wouldn't cooperate and she told me straight up that there was nothing she could do for a drug addict if he didn't want to get free of it."

Silence for a long moment. Then Dean heaved a breath. "Sam and me, we tried to help him, Cas. I swear we tried. We went through his stuff time and again, and threw out his drink and his poppy. I tracked down the people selling to him and threatened them if they didn't stop. I told him I wouldn't give him any more money, and he said …" Dean swallowed hard. "Never mind what he said. He made threats, that's all. I didn't know what the hell to do."

"Why would your District Command not do anything?" Castiel asked. He was appalled.

"The Commander didn't like Dad," Dean said flatly. "I never found out for sure, but there was this story whispered for a while that Dad had screwed his wife. Never knew for sure if it really happened, but I can sort of believe it because Dad didn't exactly bed-hop but he did like women and he was pretty good-looking until he got into the drink real bad. He had Yola on a string for a long time, but there were a couple of other women I knew he saw semi-regular too. If the guy's wife had come on to him like people said she did, then I don't think he'd have said no."

"So how was the matter resolved in the end?"

"Someone dropped a word in someone's ear, I think," Dean said. "The ear of the Provost Marshal, maybe – I never found out. All I know is one day Henryks and me, we were covering for Dad again. There was a dust-up in the market – the one where I took you to buy that cloak, remember? I don't even remember what it was all about, but one minute there was some kind of row between two traders and the next there was a mob building and a bunch of stalls turned over. Lucky it happened right on the shift change, because it took every constable we had to shut it down. Thing is, Dad should have been out there giving orders, and instead there was me and Henryks doing everything. And when we got back to the Watch House afterwards, there was the Commander from the next district waiting for us, and boy was she pissed. She'd turned up unannounced and found a rookie holding the front desk, and Dad in his office, flying high on poppy."

Dean rubbed his face with both hands as he recalled this. "That was hands-down the nastiest debrief and interrogation I ever had to sit through. I was just damned lucky I had a bunch of people around me who knew what had happened and had my back, because our District Commander tried to pin the whole shit on me."

"And then?"

"And then Dad was thrown out of the Watch. And that was that."

The end came within days, and it was as swift and sordid as many another addict's demise. Jon went out one evening and didn't come back. Officers from the neighbouring Penny Street Watch found his body in a storm drain the following day. As best they could tell, he had been beaten unconscious and robbed while he was too intoxicated to defend himself, and then thrown face down into the drain where he drowned in the couple of inches of accumulated water there. His assailants were never found.

"That was just about a year ago," Dean said bleakly. "We buried him, and the next day I went back to work expecting to hear that I was being transferred out or demoted or something. Instead they pinned the captain's bars on me. I'm guessing no one outside our Watch House wanted the job – I _know_ they only gave it to me instead of Henryks because I had seniority." He snorted. "A whole two weeks' worth of seniority. Whatever. I wasn't about to turn down the money. I paid off Yola and found different lodgings with Ellen, and got Adam settled at the Collegium. I swore I'd do things differently. And here we are."

 

xXx

 

The ride back to the Strangers Quarter was a sombre one.

_So, do you still think it's after me?_

_I still think it's following your family. I just don't understand how. The only evidence of it following you is your father's suspicions, and they appear to be baseless. There are no other obvious signs. If it's following Adam, I don't understand why it hasn't possessed him already. I haven't met Samuel –_

_There's nothing wrong with Sam, trust me. I'd know if there was something wrong with Sammy._

Castiel had looked at Dean doubtfully when he said this, but nodded and let it drop. It was true though. There was nothing wrong with Sam; every time Dean had seen him lately, he was his normal self. Besides, he would have said something to Dean if something was wrong, especially after all the trouble with Adam. Sam had been there all through Jon's rantings and ravings, and he'd been there when Adam started shouting about demons … Dean would know if there was something wrong with Sam. Wouldn't he?

It had to be the exhaustion talking that he even questioned it. In spite of everything in their barely-shared history together, Sam and Dean had somehow forged a good relationship as they became adults. The shared adversity of caring for Jon and Adam had brought them closer together than Dean would have believed possible when he was sixteen. They might not tell each other all their secrets, but they could talk to each other.

Sam would tell Dean if there was a problem. He was sure of it.

Just not sure enough, apparently.

"Look," he said quietly, as they turned into Hemp Alley. "I'll talk to Sam, alright? I'll go see him as soon as I get a day free. And hell, you're right on his doorstep now – why don't you go introduce yourself? Tell him I told you to. You'll get along just fine, he's a big old book nerd just like you."

"Perhaps I shall," Castiel said mildly.

Eslan halted by Ellen's door, and Dean slithered awkwardly down off his back.

"Thanks for the ride back," he said uncomfortably. "I guess I'll be seeing you."

"No doubt," Castiel agreed.

Well, this wasn't awkward at _all_. As if in agreement, Eslan looked around and snorted in a very exasperated way. Annoyed, Dean took a couple of steps back. What more did they want from him?

"I'll let you know if anything comes up. Fair roads and clear skies to you, Herald."

It was a dismissal and they both knew it. For a moment Dean thought Castiel might say something, but he changed his mind and inclined his head in acknowledgement. Then Eslan was trotting out of the alley, leaving Dean alone in the light of one of the lamps above the tavern door.

The noise from the Roadhouse Inn wasn't very inviting, and for a moment he considered circling around to the laundry entrance where he could cut through to the kitchen and beg something to eat. But Dean was tired and decided instead to just go straight up to his rooms. Well, that was the plan.

Ellen met him before he was fully through the door. She was still in her own grubby Watch uniform and looked weary and annoyed. "What happened to you?"

"Be easier if you asked what didn't happen," Dean said. "Everything quiet at the Watch House?"

"Sure. Old Finuta's in command tonight; Henryks's orders. Sert help anyone who tries any funny business while she's in charge, she was in a rare mood when I left. Jody's taking the next shift at dawn."

"I can live with that," Dean said, privately relieved. "In that case, I'm gonna …" He gestured at the stairs.

"Lie on my sheets in that state and I'll charge you double for the washing," Ellen told him, annoyed. "Give that damn uniform to Podina, though with the state it's in it'll take a miracle to save it. And scrub up a little."

Having to stop to wash before he slept was almost the last thing Dean wanted to do. On the other hand, he couldn't afford to pay twice for laundry and he knew Ellen well enough to know that she meant it. He gave her a weak smile. "Think it's too late to get a bucket of water from her?"

"I'll throw one over you myself if it'll get your stinking ass out of my taproom," Ellen shot back.

 

xXx

 

When Dean tumbled into bed a half-candlemark later, he felt sure he'd be too tired to dream.

Yeah, no.

There were many reasons why Dean never discussed his family; rehashing old history never brought any good in his experience, for one, but dreaming about it was high on the list too. He could do without seeing all that stuff walking through his unguarded mind while he slept, usually with a surreal twist or two just to add to the fun.

Tonight, for his viewing pleasure, he was back in Dell's Crossing again, watching as his father mended a broken tile on the roof of the house – not the house where Dean had been born, but the later one built for his stepmother. This was an actual memory, most likely of the time after Dean had been banished from the family to live with his grandparents, since he was conscious of not wanting to catch Jon's attention. Consequently, he was watching from the trees at the edge of the clearing and pretending he didn't feel the overwhelming hurt he'd felt every time he'd seen his father back then and known he wasn't wanted.

Dean had heard somewhere that most people didn't dream in colour, and while external noises and smells could sometimes insert themselves into dreams, you couldn't taste or smell or genuinely 'hear' in them either. But right now he could smell pine sap and wood smoke from the chimney, and the sourer smell of the not-too-distant midden, and everything was in vivid greens and browns and the brilliant splashes of sunlight through the forest canopy. Dreams were supposedly flat, colourless landscapes projected by your mind without more than a superficial relationship to reality, but Dean had never really believed this, because he sure as hell dreamed in colour and smells.

"That's because it's not quite true," Castiel commented. He was standing beside Dean, watching the scene with interest, and even his trainee Greys were vivid. " _Most_ people have colourless dreams, but the Gifted tend to dream more … lucidly, for the want of a better word. Mindspeakers, Foreseers, Farseers, Healers, even Bards. We all dream in colour."

Dean stared at him. "Then how do you explain me?"

Castiel's smile held a hint of amusement. "How do I explain you indeed?"

Dean was vaguely annoyed by this. "You here for a reason, Cas?" Since he dreamed in colour, it made perfect sense that he would argue with what was, after all, a figment of his imagination. However 'lucid' it might be.

"It occurred to me that you might not sleep well tonight, after our conversation. Why are you here, Dean?"

"Because I never left."

Even in the dream Dean blinked. He wasn't sure where that had come from.

But Castiel only nodded. "This is your home?"

"Nope. Sammy and Adam live here, not me."

"Then perhaps you should walk away," Castiel suggested gently. "Visit happier places."

The comment irritated him, and he could smell the smoke in the background.   He always smelled the smoke. "Like where, Cas? I ain't got no happy endings!"

Castiel's expression was troubled. "You don't know how things will end, Dean. You should have more faith – in yourself, if nothing else."

"Faith … right. A lot of use that's ever been to me."

The smell of smoke was growing stronger, wisps of it beginning to drift through the clearing.

"Dean." Castiel's tone became more urgent. "Please, step away from here. Let me lead you somewhere more pleasant."

"I can't leave here, Cas, I already told you – I never left."

"That's not true. You did once, and you can again. Please let me help – "

"No."

Now he could hear the crackle of the flames and feel the heat from the house as it burned. Jon continued to mend the roof, uncaring of the fire licking between the tiles as he worked on them and eerily, somewhere out of sight, Kate was singing. The fire roared out of the windows and door, the shutters blackening and twisting.

Castiel was still protesting, trying to make him leave, but Dean turned his back and ruthlessly shut him out.

And just like that Castiel was gone, leaving Dean to watch the conflagration alone.

 

xXx

 

On the other side of the city, Castiel lurched out of his bed clutching his temples in shock and pain. For someone with such a weak Mindspeaking Gift, Dean was astonishingly good at repelling mental intrusion when he chose -

_Perhaps he is not such a weak Mindspeaker then,_ Eslan suggested mildly, as he delicately blocked some of the pain.

_Perhaps not,_ Castiel agreed, shaken.

_And perhaps this was ill-advised?_

_As to that … I cannot say._

 

xXx

 

Someone else was dreaming of smoke and fires, but the voice that whispered to him was far more subtle, mocking and conniving.

"I won't do it," he told it fiercely, even as he watched all the places he loved burn before his eyes, helpless to prevent it. "I'm not letting you in."

_Maybe not yet,_ the voice whispered gleefully, _but soon._

"You can go to hell!"

_You think this'll hurt, boy? You don't have the first idea what REAL hurt is. I know all your weakest spots already and it's just a matter of time before I get to 'em._

_And then you'll say yes anyway._

 


	6. Chapter 6

"Alright, you mangy lot! Pipe down for a whole five minutes."

Perhaps not the most by-the-book opening to a shift roll-call, but Dean had learned long ago that Watch officers in the lower city didn't respond to decorum anyway. This way he got a bunch of grins at least, so he called it a win and moved on.

"Who've we got today? Murgo?"

"Aye, Cap'n."

"Paoli?"

"Aye!"

"Saul?"

A pause. Dean looked up. "Could've sworn I saw him when I came in."

"In the privy, Captain," Paoli said, making a face. "Said he had a bad fish roll last night."

"Great. Tell me he didn't get it from that damn caupona on Wicket Street – "

"I shut that place down myself," Murgo grumbled.

"Kirrick reported yesterday that it had re-opened," Ash said, and he smiled lazily. "Glad to see Constable Saul's fine palate hasn't changed any."

"Guess I'll have to go see 'em myself," Dean said sourly. Some places in the city just didn't know when to accept they were shut down. "Last thing we need is a bunch of evacuees being fed bad fish on top of being away from home. Fine, that's first on my list today. Moving on … Jo, you here?"

"Aye, Captain."

"Ash?"

"My mind roams free, but my body is tethered to this mortal world …"

"Yeah, great, moving on. Listen up, people, since it looks like Saul's gonna be staying close to the nearest privy today, it's just as well District Command sent us some back-up. Everyone say "heyla!" to Constable Mïti here, on loan to us from Exile's Gate Watch House for a few months. She'll be taking the unlamented former Constable Hayden's slot, just for the awesome experience working with us will give her."

Constable Mïti grinned at this, and nodded to the others. Like Henryks, her people had originally come from somewhere much further south than Dean's, south of the Dhorisha Plains perhaps, Velvar or Acabarrin or somewhere similar. She was dark-skinned and had dark curling hair pinned in a sensible knot on the crown of her head; her uniform had seen hard wear, like the others', but was clean and neat as a pin. Bobby Singer's report of her was good, and all she really needed was some experience in a couple of different Watch Houses before she started climbing the promotion ladder.

Of course, it also helped that her mother was the well-respected captain of the Pieman's Yard Watch, but from what Dean had read in Mïti's file, she would have got ahead on merit anyway.

"Right – Mïti, you go out with Paoli today and get an eyeball on our patch. Saul had better be on front desk. Murgo, brief Saul before you head out. Ash, keep an eye on Saul for me, and send a runner after me if there's any problems. Jo, you're with me today." Dean smacked on hand on the desk in front of him. "Let's go get them before they get us, people."

Jo was in high spirits at being out on the streets instead, as she had feared, of being stuck behind the desk again. This inevitably made her chatty, but Dean was used to this and perfectly capable of tuning out eighty to ninety percent of what she said, while retaining just enough attention to answer any serious comment she might make. And there were enough interruptions in their progress that his lack of serious attention didn't become noticeable.

The interruptions were a blessing anyway, as they prevented Dean from brooding too much over his conversations with Castiel the day before.

The arsonist wasn't Adam, that was certain. Good.

It wasn't Dean himself, of that he was almost as certain. Also good.

He couldn't see how it could possibly be Sam. So that was … good. Right?

Dean wished his gut would shut the fuck up over this. It couldn't be Sam. There would be evidence, or Sam would have come to him. Their relationship had been pretty tight ever since Jon's problems had surfaced and they'd had to work together to deal with them. Sam would know he could come to Dean if he was in trouble.

It couldn't be Sam.

If it wasn't, they were back at square one, with nowhere else to look.

"Reckon Pamela wants a word, Captain," Jo said, breaking into his thoughts, and Dean looked across the narrow street to an offset doorway where a dark-haired woman was waving discreetly to them.

"Better see what she wants, I guess," he said, masking his mixed feelings at this.

"Want me to talk to her?" Jo asked warily.

"Yeah, that'd look good. Come on, let's just do this." He waited for a donkey loaded with panniers full of kindling to pass, then crossed the street without bothering to see if Jo was following him.

Pamela was a few years older than Dean, good looking with a seductive edge that he'd always found attractive. She had never been shy about indicating that she found him equally attractive, and once or twice they'd explored it further … until Jon's problems had brought to light an aspect of Pamela that had driven a swift wedge between them.

She was unmarried and childless, and her profession was musician and luthier. Her early life had been spent in a travelling merchant caravan, crisscrossing the northern kingdoms, but at some point she'd fetched up in Valdemar and decided to stay. This was not a problem, but her third trade – quite legitimately plied in other kingdoms – had led to her being registered in a local temple in Haven.

Pamela was a seer. The gift wasn't particularly strong, but she had a talent for reading cards and seeing images in candles and still water, and when the local people had found out she began to make quite a good living from it. Until Dean had heard about it, of course.

As he'd told Castiel, being a seer wasn't illegal but making money from it _was_. In practice, most authorities turned a blind eye provided that the payment wasn't monetary and didn't constitute an actual living, as opposed to the occasional discreet gift. What he'd never been able to work out was what Pamela was scoring from people in return for card readings and tracing lost objects; he suspected it was far more than she let on, as the only luthiers and musicians who made the kind of living she did were directly affiliated with the Bardic Circle. Still, Dean might have winked at it himself, if he hadn't discovered that she was one of the seers who'd had dealings with Jon.

Afterwards, he had reluctantly been brought to see that Pamela had not been the problem. She had in fact attempted to open Jon's eyes to the fact that the soothsayer he was listening to was a fake, without success, and backed away when it was clear that his problems ran deeper than that and he wasn't inclined to listen to her.

Not listening was a trait that ran right through the whole Winchester family, however, with the result that Dean overreacted and hauled Pamela in front of the magistrates. Things had been frosty between them ever since.

She watched him crossing the street now, leaning one shoulder against her doorpost, her arms folded under her breasts, and the cool look she gave him didn't promise anything good.

"Well?" Dean asked, when he stepped up onto the pavement before her.

"Are you an equal opportunity life-wrecker, or do you just crap on your friends?" she asked.

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me. Is it just me who gets to feel the full weight of the law, or are all seers and so-called seers fair game to you?"

"Someone stealing your business?" Jo snarked.

"That's enough," Dean told her curtly.

The smile Pamela turned on Jo had an edge like a razor. "You're cute, little girl, but how cute will you be after one of the big boy gang-masters sets his dogs on you? Can't turn me in for that one," she added to Dean, her smile widening. "That one's a free gift."

"Hey!" Jo surged forward, but Dean thrust her back.

"Do you have a point?" he snapped at Pamela.

"Sure I do. We got ourselves a new talent in the neighbourhood – blew in from outkingdom a while back, been setting herself up as a source of talismans and exotic gewgaws ever since."

"If that's all she's doing, there's no problem – "

"Calls herself a _prophetess_ , no less," Pamela said, with a bitter twist to her mouth.

That gave Dean a pause. "You sure she's not just a priestess of some small-scale religion?" he asked suspiciously. Because in Valdemar that wasn't illegal, although the woman in question would still need to submit to an interview with the Lord Patriarch's office before she had license to prognosticate. And she'd have to prove that she had more than just a handful of family members for her congregation.

"No idea; that's _your_ job." Pamela pushed herself away from the doorpost. "What I do know is she claims to see a questioner's death. Lots of fun in that, I'm sure."

Dean had heard of death cults; unsubstantiated stories about them surfaced every once in a while, usually set in other, more distant sectors of the city, but the nearest he'd ever come to seeing one was the gentle, reclusive Sisters of the Crone who cared for the Paupers' Boneyard outside the city wall. He wondered if a cult was what was going on here, and what to do about it if it was. Calling in the Temple Guard might be the most efficient answer, but it wouldn't make him popular with some of the locals if it turned out to be another situation like Pamela's. Folk liked their soothsayers, and there were people in the area who still hadn't forgiven him for turning her in.

On the other hand, having a death cult operating in the area during a time of crisis, when there were flood refugees everywhere, was not going to help anyone except the 'prophetess' herself.

"Great," he said finally. "Fine, we'll take a look. Where's she hanging out?"

"Two streets over, one door down from the braid workshop. Got herself a little slip of a shop to sell her handicrafts, and lives in the room over."

Dean knew the place; the previous occupant had been a small-scale apothecary who held consultations in the room over the shop. Supposedly she'd left to go care for relatives in the north. He nodded to Pamela.

"Come on, Jo."

"Winchester." Dean looked back, and saw that some of Pamela's angry, defensive body language had slipped away. She looked grim. "Watch yourself," she told him. "I'm pretty sure this one's the real deal, and not in a good way. You might want to leave the rookie outside."

"I'm not a rookie," Jo said resentfully when they resumed their walk up the street. "I'm nearly qualified. And what did she mean about gang-masters' dogs?"

"She was trying to rattle you," Dean said, reining in his impatience with difficulty. "And it worked."

"She's not much of a seer, right?"

He heard the note of anxiety in her voice that time, and relented. "She is, but don't let it bug you. From what I've heard, most visions and prophecies either don't come true because they're too far in the future, or they turn out different to what you expect. You'll probably trip over one of those stupid "beware of the dog" plates some of the fancy folk have set into their floors."

Jo was mollified by this, but her interest was piqued. "How can a prophecy be too far into the future to come true?"

Dean rolled his eyes. "Do I look like I'm an expert on seers? Most days I can't even predict when I'm gonna get my supper." To his relief, a man was trying to get their attention from the doorway of a butcher's shop across the street. "Go see what Ras Flesher wants, and then meet me outside this so-called prophetess's shop when you're done."

Jo was inclined to take this in bad part. "I want to see what she looks like …"

"What are you, five? Pretty sure she looks like a person. Now get going."

In the event, he was glad Jo wasn't with him when he met with the prophetess, because Pamela's instincts hadn't erred. She was definitely the real deal.

And not in a good way.

 

xXx

 

The role of the Watch, Dean had been told when he first enrolled, was to be the visible presence of the Crown's Justice on the streets of Haven. In that respect they had something in common with the Heralds, who didn't wear their eye-catching white uniforms for nothing. It was rarely the role of the Watch to gather intelligence unseen - there were rumoured to be other individuals hired directly by the Queen's High Council who did that. Instead, they were supposed to be visible, in the eternally disappointed hope that they would prove to be some sort of deterrent to crime.

Consequently, it was impossible for Dean to approach the prophetess's newly-acquired premises without being noticed well in advance, and thus inevitably she would know he was coming. He rather hoped this would lead to her saying something mysterious and portentous like _I knew you would come!_ , giving him an opportunity to mock her, even if it was only in the privacy of his own head. But when he found a young girl – perhaps ten at most – minding the tiny shop from a stool just inside the door, he desperately hoped she wasn't the prophetess in question.

Then his eyes adjusted to the dim light in there and he recognised her. "Talie, does your Uncle Henryks know you're here?" he demanded, and the girl looked awkward.

"Lady Kali needs someone to help her out, Cap'n Winchester," she mumbled. "Momma says it's fine."

"Yeah, well I'm gonna be having words with your momma." The shop was so narrow that there were shelves only on one wall, and Dean's eyes tracked over them with increasing disquiet. The goods on display – presumably for sale – were largely of the hanging talisman variety, although there were also pots and jars and bundles of herbs and other things. Chunks of rock, some showing bands of coloured minerals, some inscribed with runes. Bones, large and small, some clean and white, some brown and stained, some also inscribed. Things made out of hair. Pieces of animal hide stretched over frames of twigs or bones, decorated with beads or painted in earthy colours. There was a long, twisted tusk of some kind hanging from the ceiling for nearly the length of the shop. And there was a statue of a woman, perhaps two feet high, with cold amethyst eyes, wearing a skirt made of hair and a necklace of carved fingers, her four arms upraised and skulls dangling from her hands. Headless bodies lay under one of her feet; the other foot was upraised as though in dance.

Dean had seen plenty of religious articles of this type before, but never so many in one place, and there was something about seeing them all clustered together in the dark little shop that was disquieting.

"Right. Where is she?" he asked Talie, whose big dark eyes widened in dismay.

"I – I don't think she's gonna want to see you, Cap'n – "

"And I don't think I care what she wants. She upstairs?"

"Yes, but – "

"Talie, when Jo Harvelle gets here, you tell her I said she's to mind the door, and you cut on home, you hear me?" He overrode her immediate protest. "I don't want to hear it, kid. You go straight home and you tell your momma I'm going to be paying her a visit later."

Talie wrung her hands. "Cap'n …"

Dean sighed. "You listen to me, Talali," he said, using her full name to make her pay attention. "I don't care what this woman's paying you – if she was any kind of decent, she wouldn't be asking a kid your age to mind a place like this."

Talie swallowed, but leaned towards him, whispering: "Cap'n, you don't _know_. She – she controls the spirits."

"Says who?" he whispered back.

She looked completely astounded at this. "She does!"

"You know what comes out of a donkey's butt, kid?" Talie nodded. "That's what's coming out of this woman's mouth. Anyone who tells you they can control spirits is telling you a whopping great lie. Now what did you say she calls herself?"

"Lady Kali."

"Because plain Kali ain't good enough I guess. Fine, I'm heading upstairs."

The stairs in these places were the bane of Dean's life, for they weren't constructed with someone of his height and breadth of shoulders in mind. Narrow and steep and dark; they always made him nervous, for getting his Bully out would be nearly impossible in the confined space and any assailant above him had the advantage. And that was without the concern that he might simply miss a step.

But no guard was lurking at the head of the stairs to attack him, and Lady Kali herself wasn't waiting to wallop him with a lamp as he appeared in her chamber – although waiting for Dean she certainly was.

The room he stepped into was no bigger than the shop below, but a second set of stairs half concealed behind a length of beaded cloth indicated another chamber above; probably a bedchamber or similar, if the undomestic tone of this room was any guide. The description that actually popped into Dean's head was "receiving room", a designation that he would normally apply to something like the formal room used by a high priest or similar to meet with supplicants. He suspected this was the intended effect here too.

There were dramatic hangings on the walls and a long woven mat on the floor that led directly to the foot of the only piece of furniture in the room, a heavy chair carved out of dark wood with ornate arms and a high, rounded back. It occurred to Dean that the chair must have either been created in situ or brought up in sections to be reassembled; there was no way it could have been manoeuvred up those stairs in one piece, for it was huge, easily dominating the room.

Focusing on trivialities was his way of sidestepping any alarm he might feel when he got his first look at the occupant of the chair.

Ignoring the dramatic beaded scarlet gown and tall headdress she wore, Dean turned his attention to 'Lady' Kali's face, and something struck him almost at once. The uninitiated might assume that she was from the same ethnic group as the majority of residents in this area; she had brown skin, black hair and big dark eyes. Dean knew the people of his sector inside out, though, and he could tell that while she probably came from a very similar, hot, far southern country, she was most definitely not from the same region as Henryks, Rufus, Mïti and their families. Her features were substantially different, more slender and delicate, with fine, high cheekbones and faintly tilted eyes. He'd never seen anyone who looked quite like her before, and that alone was interesting because it really begged the question of what she was doing in Valdemar.

Appearance aside, her face was as expressionless as a carved statue, and her eyes were as dark and unreadable as those of Death's Handmaidens. It was impossible to tell what, if anything, she thought of Dean walking casually into the room, but he _did_ have an idea that she wasn't impressed. Well, he hadn't really expected her to be, but that the image she made taken as a whole was weirdly intimidating was something he chose to ignore.

He tried an amiable smile. "You sit there like that all day, or is it just for me?"

"No."

Right … "You Kali?"

"That is one of my names," she said coldly, after an appreciable pause.

It was surprising how many people Dean knew who could say that, so he was less impressed than perhaps she intended him to be. Mostly, he was relieved that she could speak Valdemaran so well; having to find a translator would have been a nuisance and a lot got lost in a conversation that had to be relayed each way by a third party.

"And is that the name you go by most of the time?" he asked her.

"Define 'most of the time', Captain Dean Winchester."

That she knew his name and rank didn't impress him much either. "Is Kali the name you're usually known by in this community?" he asked with a level of patience he certainly wasn't feeling.

"The people here refer to me as _Lady_ Kali," she retorted.

"Which would be nice if that was really your title, but I'm guessing you don't actually have a right to use it by most folk's reckoning, so we'll pass on that part, yeah?" Dean gave her a bland smile in response to her look of poisonous disdain.

"You have no idea of who I am," she told him.

"Why don't you astonish me?" he invited her.

"I am a goddess, born out of death – "

"Awesome, " Dean interrupted, cutting her off sharply. Seriously? This was going to be the flavour of his day? The thought of the paperwork involved in reporting a self-proclaimed goddess to the Lord Patriarch's office made his head ache and sharpened his voice. "You look pretty damn mortal to me, lady, and while I've seen some shabby temples over the years, none of them are hiding out in a rent-by-the-week room above a shop in the lower city. And they don't peddle illegal prophecies or hire little girls to sell their fake talismans for them, so try another story!"

Kali's eyes flashed and she stood up gracefully. Physically she was slight, but her extraordinary headdress gave her a couple of inches' advantage over Dean as she slowly approached him. Her lip curled as she looked him up and down.

"Would someone like you even recognise a true goddess if he met one?" she sneered.

"Would any goddess worth the name waste her time with me?" he retorted.

"Do you say that out of humility or contempt?"

"Guess." Dean gave her his brightest, most annoying grin. "And you can fry me with a celestial lightning bolt any time you're ready, princess. I won't even try to run." Kali glared at him. "Yeah, that's what I thought. So how about we ditch the stupid and have a straightforward discussion here? There's a nasty rumour going around that you're handing out predictions of the future in return for payment, and you being an outkingdomer and all, I guess you might not be aware that we have laws against that kind of thing. So – what's your story?"

"You should show me some respect," she told him, and Dean gave up on trying to make this friendly and light-hearted.

"Respect is a two-way street," he told her flatly, "and so far I don't see any sign of you respecting anybody else. You sure as hell didn't respect the folks around here when you got one of their little girls to sell a bunch of shit that's borderline legal and then tried to keep her in line by telling her, and probably her folks too, that you control spirits. And you don't respect the laws of this kingdom by selling prophecies, real _or_ fake. So explain to me just why I'm supposed to show you any respect whatsoever?"

There was a long, unfriendly pause during which she stared at him unblinkingly. Then she surprised him.

"You should pray for rain."

Dean blinked. "I – _what?_ "

Kali's expression didn't change. "Pray for rain."

"Do you not get out much or something?" Dean demanded. "In case you haven't noticed, we've had nothing _but_ rain for weeks now. We get much more rain and half the city's gonna get washed away!"

"The _shtuga_ you fear will destroy you and all you hold precious if you do not use every weapon you have against it," she said coolly. She reached out and plucked a smouldering incense stick out of a holder on the wall, and used the glowing tip to draw a symbol in the air between them, the afterimage burning into Dean's eyes in the low lamplight of the room. "When you confront it, hold the sigil in your mind and pray for enough water to contain it."

"What the hell, lady – "

"That is all I have to say to you, Captain." Kali's expression was cool, indifferent, contemptuous, as she turned away from him and returned to her chair to seat herself in it like a queen. "No doubt we will meet again. But for now you will leave me."

"Right," Dean said, staring at her. He was considerably thrown by this. "Then I guess we'll have to see what the Lord Patriarch has to say." As a parting shot it was feeble, and he knew it.

He was halfway down the stairs when her voice drifted after him, dark and a little mocking:

_"Do not forget to pray for rain."_

Jo was waiting for him in the shop below.

"Well?" she demanded. "Is she a real seer?"

"She's a real piece of work," Dean said sourly. "Now scram back to the Watch House and send a runner to the Temple Offices in Lock-And-Key Row – get 'em to send one of their officers out here for an inspection. And you better grab me one of those notices that puts a temporary halt on business while you're at it – Ash will know the ones I mean. Until the Lord Patriarch's people have had a chance to question her, the so-called Lady Kali ain't going to be operating her shop."

"What are you going to be doing?" Jo wanted to know.

"I'll be making sure no one decides to spirit any of this stuff away until the Temple Officer gets here. Then I need to have a chat with someone."

He said this last rather grimly, since he didn't think Henryks or his sister were going to appreciate the conversation they needed to have about Talie's erstwhile employment.

 

xXx

 

When Dean returned to the Watch House later that morning it was already raining again, to his disgust and resentment. _Pray for rain_ Kali said; he didn't need to _pray_ for rain, the gods seemed hell-bent on gifting it to him in embarrassing quantities already.

"Please tell me we're not slated for flood duty again tonight," he said wearily to a rather wan-looking Constable Saul behind the desk, as he took his wet cloak off and shook it out.

"No word so far, Cap'n," Saul said. "A runner brought a message from the Pottery District for you not half a candlemark ago though."

Dean paused, staring at him in mild surprise. "The Pottery District?"

"Aye." Saul grabbed a piece of paper from his log-sheet. "Verbal message from Lieutenant Cassie Robbins."

Cassie Robbins was someone Dean had known during his time at the Pieman's Yard Watch in the Granary District; her father had been captain at the time, although he'd died on duty a few weeks before Dean was transferred back to the Strangers Quarter. Dean had had one of his longest relationships with Cassie, but they'd split up when he left the Granary District. He had no idea that she'd transferred to the Pottery District since then.

"What's she say?" he asked.

"Said she heard you'd had a run of mystery fires here and wanted you to know that they had a suspicious fire on her watch last night," Saul said, reading from his notes. "Tenement burned to the ground despite the torrential rain; two confirmed deaths so far, and six people missing. Thought you might want to know in case it's the same arsonist."

Dean's most immediate thought was that this was unlikely; he had no connection to the Pottery District except Cassie herself, and he hadn't even known she was there. Plus, it was a tenement fire, not a direct attack.

Then his brain screeched to an abrupt halt.

Lisa had taken her son and gone to her sister in the Pottery District.

No …

Dean didn't realise he was almost hyperventilating until heard Saul's alarmed voice demanding to know if he should call someone.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," he managed, brushing off the concern and pulling himself together with an effort. "Saul, I've gotta head over there and check this out. Send a runner out to get Murgo and tell him he's in charge until - " He stopped. Ran a hand over his face as he tried to think clearly. "Probably until Jody comes on duty," he admitted finally. The Pottery District wasn't as far as the Collegia, but it was still going to take him too much time to get there and back if he couldn't hitch a ride.

Saul was exchanging worried looks with Jo.

"Cap'n?"

"Yeah?"

Saul reached up to the hook behind the desk and took his own cloak down, offering it to Dean. "Take mine - yours is wet already. And you'll be passing my brother's yard in Tally Street. If he's there, he'll give you a ride to the Pottery District in his wagon."

Dean nodded. "Thanks, Saul."

 

xXx

 

"What the hell happened to you now?" Ellen demanded, when Dean finally made it back to the Roadhouse Inn that evening.

For a moment he actually considered telling her the whole saga of rushing to the Pottery District to find Cassie Robbins and confirm that, yes, the tenement building that burned down _was_ the building Lisa's sister lived in, but no, mercifully Lisa, the baby, her sister, and her sister's kids, were all safe and now staying with family elsewhere in the district. That examination of the remains of the building had revealed no new evidence and was too destroyed to find a hint of brimstone even had there been any. And that Dean was still unsure whether sending a message about it to Castiel at the Collegium had been the right thing to do.

Oh - and that there had been a message from Headquarters awaiting him when he returned to the Ropewalk Watch House, demanding his attendance upon the District Commander the next day.

Upon reflection Dean decided he didn't want to tell Ellen any of this, which was just as well because she clearly wasn't interested in an answer, as was demonstrated by what she said next: "Don't get comfortable. You've got a visitor."

For a moment he thought it must be Castiel, in response to his message. Then common sense reasserted itself; it was unlikely the messenger had reached the Palace complex yet. So he peered around Ellen and was surprised to see a very pretty blonde girl of about Sam's age standing by the bar. She was wearing the blue Unaffiliated Student uniform, and didn't seem very comfortable in the taproom. Dean had long experience in sizing up a person's social class at a glance, and her general bearing (it was obvious she had never been in a lower city tavern in her life) coupled with the materials her uniform was made from, told him everything he needed to know. Probably merchant class, not at the higher end of it, but from a family that was comfortably circumstanced and very respectable.

"She wouldn't tell me what it's about," Ellen added, sounding disgruntled.

"Good for her." Dean abandoned Ellen, reflecting that it took some character to face down her in her own tavern, and went to rescue the girl from the third-class street minstrel who was bothering her.

"Beat it," he told the minstrel unceremoniously.

"For a copper-bit I could – "

"How about you leave and I forget about charging you with something?"

The minstrel slunk away to annoy someone else, and Dean turned to the girl. "I'm Captain Winchester. You wanted to speak to me?"

"You're Sam's brother Dean?" Whatever she was nervous about – and she was fretting about something – she was confident enough speaking to him.

"That's right." Dean had a flash of inspiration, a minor miracle after the day he'd had. "Are you Jessica?"

"Yes – has Sam told you about me?" she demanded.

Dean snorted. "Not likely, sweetheart! I heard about you from his landlady, Tula."

"Oh." To her credit Jessica didn't blush, but she did shut up for a moment.

"Look, I'm tired and I've had a hell of a day," Dean told her bluntly. "If there's something you need to tell me, now would be a good time. Before I fall face down on the bar."

"Is there somewhere we could talk that's more private than this?" Jessica asked uneasily.

The request was not unjustified. Ellen might be the only person openly trying to eavesdrop, but Dean knew every other pair of ears in the tavern was cocked in their direction at that moment. But it was also a very bad idea.

"You see all these people having a good time here tonight?" Dean asked her, forcing a smile. "They all think you're here to sleep with me. If we go somewhere more private now, by tomorrow everyone in the Strangers Quarter will _know_ you slept with me and what positions we did it in."

She looked appalled. "That's disgusting!"

"No, sweetheart, that's what living cheek by jowl in the lower city is like. Everyone lives for the drama of their neighbours' lives."

Jessica bit her lip, distressed. "I don't think I should tell you in front of a lot of people – you'll think I'm crazy – "

"You're walking out with one of my little brothers; I already _know_ you're crazy." Dean sighed. "How did you get here anyway?"

"I walked."

He swore under his breath. Getting her back to the Collegia safely was going to be a challenge at this time of the evening. On the other hand, the fact that she'd walked all the way to a part of the lower city she'd never remotely been near before, just to speak to him, did impress him with the urgency of the situation.

"Fine – walk with me down to the Watch House and you can tell me what's wrong on the way. You got any coin on you?"

"Of course – " He caught her hand just as she was about to go for whatever concealed purse she was carrying.

"Don't show everyone, unless you want it to go missing before you're out of the door," Dean warned her gently. "These aren't bad folk, but you don't want to put a strain on their honesty, do you?"

Jessica's eyes were wide. "But don't you live here?"

"I do. That's how I know how honest they are," Dean said tiredly.

 

xXx

 

Jessica was a girl Dean would love to flirt with on a normal day, partly to tease Sam, who was so easy to get a rise out of, but also partly because he thought that few things became a girl more than the flush of annoyance. She was pretty, she was smart, she was confident, and more than that, Dean was reasonably sure that if he was given half a chance he would actually like her a lot just for being herself.

She also had a lot of courage, he realised, as she made herself tell him what was on her mind. It was pretty clear from the first word that she didn't expect to be believed, and had she related this story to anyone else – with the exception of Castiel perhaps – she would have good reason to believe that.

"There's something wrong with Sam," she told him.

Realistically, Dean had been waiting for her to say this from the moment he realised who she was. "Tell me."

"I think maybe he's been taking something." The look she shot Dean told him a lot, from her reluctance to believe this of Sam, to what she already knew about their family. "Not something like dreamsugar or yipweed, but maybe candlegreen or wide-eye – "

"Candlegreen?" That was a new one to Dean.

"It's not really a drug," she said hurriedly. "I didn't even think it really existed until Midwinter, when someone in my class said they were using it to help them study. It's something you can put in a candle-lamp and the smoke helps you to stay awake and alert."

It sounded close enough to a drug for Dean's definition, but telling Jessica that would probably be counterproductive. "Right. And what's wide-eye?"

"It's a tea, really strong, that helps you stay alert too. Like gillyflower tea, only much stronger – like, ten times stronger."

Just the idea was enough to make Dean's hair curl. "And you think this is making him act weird?"

"Well … some people have a bad reaction to things like that, don't they?"

Adam came to mind. All the same … "It'd have to be more than just a stimulant, Jess. Most teas can make you jittery if you drink too much and don't rest enough, but that's about it. I don't know about this candlegreen stuff though – "

"I don't really think it's candlegreen," she admitted. "But that's because it's too expensive and hard to get hold of. I mean, Sam … he doesn't have a lot of money. Besides, he's not exactly hyped up. He's loud and excitable, but it's not really like he took something. It's … I can't explain it, he's just not being himself. I think he went to a cock-fight the other night, or something like that. That's really not like him."

No, it wasn't. Anyone listening to Sam's rants about the type of people who ill-treated animals would know that. But Dean also knew that anyone who didn't know Sam would just say that he was cutting loose a little. "Is there anything else?"

They cut out into the main street and under one of the corner lamps for a moment. That was the only reason Dean was able to see Jessica's expression when he looked at her, and her face twisted briefly with a sick kind of hurt and shame that he recognised and made his chest seize in alarm.

"Jessica – has he hurt you?"

Her voice was a little unsteady when she eventually replied. "He – I stay with him sometimes. At night. We study together and it gets late and - I stay over. Last night he was different. He's never tried to make me do anything I didn't want to do before, but last night – it wasn't bad exactly, but – I didn't like it. And he didn't seem to care. Like – it was like he thought I was just playing hard to get or something. But I wasn't."

Dean wanted to throw up. In spite of that, his professional Watch Officer self said, "Do you need to see a Healer?"

She shook her head quickly. "It wasn't like that."

Which didn't mean that it couldn't turn that way pretty quickly. The thought was horrifying. _It's not him,_ Dean reminded himself savagely. _It's got to be the demon. Azazel_.

"Is that why you decided to come and tell me?" he asked her carefully.

"I thought maybe you could do something – talk to him?" In spite of the story she'd just told him, Jessica managed to produce a little snort of amusement.   "The way Sam talks about you, you should be ten feet tall with eyes in the back of your head!"

It was a weak joke, but Dean grinned all the same. What a courageous girl she was.

"I do my best, but I'm just a common Watch Officer, ma'am!" But he was thinking hard, and now he was wishing desperately he could speak to Castiel rather than wait for the reply to his message.

But perhaps they could kill two birds with one stone.

"Look, Jess, we need to get you back to the Collegium before anyone notices you're missing, and I need to see Sam before I decide what to do. So what we really need is …" He looked around indecisively, and noticed a familiar little pony cart standing outside the Ghost Horse Tavern, known locally as the Bony Nag on account of the skeletal horse on its sign. There was a heap of empty hemp sacks in the back of the cart, and the owner was nowhere to be seen; the pony was being tended by a small girl in a patched frock, probably on the promise of a copper-bit or two for the service. "That's what we need. Come on."

He grabbed Jessica's hand and jogged across the street to the cart. The little girl, initially anxious at being approached, beamed at him when she saw who it was.

"Heyla, Jinny! Is that Micho's cart?"

She nodded happily, showing him a gap-toothed smile. Dean grinned at her. "Is he in the Nag, getting a fix-me-up?"

"Yep!" she piped. "An' he won't be half a candlemark, he promised."

That seemed a little unlikely to Dean, based on what he knew of Micho. He also knew that Jinny's mother would come looking for her soon and would probably take the fight right into the tavern when she found out who her daughter was temporarily working for. This was undesirable for a number of reasons. So really it would do everyone a favour if Dean found a different solution to the situation, especially if the solution also solved his own current dilemma. The only question was whether he went into the tavern and asked nicely, which might be unproductive of anything but an argument with Micho and his friends, or whether he took the more expedient route.

"How much coin do you have on you?" he asked Jessica, who was staring around at the night-time street activity with trepidation.

"Um – about fifteen in silver royals and twenty-something in coppers, I think."

Wow, really? "Let me have two royals and three copper-bits."

"Are we going to hire the cart?" Jessica asked as she fumbled inside her sleeve.

"Kind of." Dean took the coins from her and crouched down in front of Jinny. He held up two of the copper-bits. "These are for looking after the pony cart." Jinny sucked in a breath excitedly, proving that Micho had promised her just one. Dean held up the third one. "And this one is for taking a message to Micho for me now. Can you do that for me, Jinny?"

"Yes!" Jinny held out her hand at once, but Dean hung onto the coins. "Promise me you'll do exactly as I say? You know I'll find out if you don't."

"I promise, Cap'n Winchester!"

"All right. You take these two silver royals and give them to Micho, you understand? And you tell him that Captain Winchester needs to borrow his pony cart, but I'll bring it back to him before sunrise. Can you do that? Tell me."

Jinny repeated the message faithfully, so he handed over the coins. "Don't forget to give Micho the silver and the message. And then you run home to your mom, you understand? It's too late for you to be out here on your own."

Jinny's fingers had no sooner closed over the money than she was gone, darting into the tavern.

"Will he mind?" Jessica asked, as they climbed into the cart.

"Honestly? I doubt he'll even notice it's gone." Dean picked up the reins. "Hold on tight – it's gonna be a bumpy ride."

 

xXx

 

Jessica's lodgings were in a building a couple of streets from Tula Redaxe's house. This was good, because it had a small courtyard where Dean could stash Micho's pony-cart temporarily, and it was closer to the Heralds' Collegium. The only question was what to do first.

"Where was Sam when you left tonight?" Dean asked Jessica.

"He went out," she said, and there was a pinched look about her mouth as she said it. "A couple of guys came over – they take some of the same courses as him, but he doesn't usually talk to them much. They all went off somewhere together."

"Fine. Let's see if he's back yet," Dean decided. He had to see what was going on with Sam for himself. "Look, you should leave this to me – "

But Jessica was shaking her head stubbornly. "No, I need to know what's going on with him."

"He's gonna be difficult if he sees you with me." It was too late and Dean was too tired to be anything but blunt with her. "Jess, I've got a reputation with women. If he sees you with me, it could get pretty nasty."

"He's already pretty nasty," she retorted, "and you need me to help you find him if he's not at home. I don't think you have the first idea of the places he hangs out, the two of you are completely different."

Actually Dean had a fairly good idea of the places Sam hung out, after the soul-destroying search of the upper city for Adam, and he didn't think he and Sam were as different as Jessica believed, but he wasn't about to argue with her. Something told him it would be utterly pointless.

"Fine, let's go," he sighed.

Tula wasn't overly happy to see the pair of them when Dean knocked on her door, but nor was she surprised, and it quickly became evident that even she had noticed something wasn't quite right with Sam.

"What's he got himself into?" she demanded grimly, as she showed Dean and Jessica into her own small parlour.

Luckily Dean had a ready-made cover story to hand. "You heard what went down with Adam recently?"

Tula's expression darkened. "I heard. I know Ellua Threegoats."

"Yeah," Dean said wearily. "So now I gotta check Sam's room too. You alright with that, or do I need to get Captain Claeton over here?"

This was taking a gamble but, as he'd hoped, Tula didn't want anything official unless it was absolutely necessary, and Dean being a Watch Captain himself was good enough for her.

"Go wait out by the stairs. I'll get my keys," she said.

"What happened to Adam?" Jessica asked Dean.

"Do you know him?"

She shrugged. "A little."

It was tempting not to tell her – Dean had had enough public exposure of his family's problems over the years to last him a dozen lifetimes. But if she was to be of any help here, she had to know enough that she could act convincingly when they entered Sam's room.

"He got hopped up on a batch of bad weed and – "

"Great, are you telling everyone about my screw-ups now?"

Dean jerked around and swore. Adam was standing in the doorway of the boarding house, and he looked as pissed off as he ever did around his eldest brother.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Dean demanded.

"I came to see Sam. What are _you_ doing here?" Adam flung back at him.

"I'm looking for a priest to take my confession – what do you _think_ I'm doing here?"

"You came all the way up to the Collegia at this time of night, just to see Sam?"

Dean was definitely not at his best by this time, which probably explained why the next words out of his mouth were: "No, I came to see you, but then I remembered what a warm welcome I got the last couple of times."

"Wow!" Jessica said, before Adam could express his outrage. "Sam was right – you two really _do_ hate each other."

"I don't hate him!" Dean retorted, and was thrown into confusion by Adam saying nearly the same thing at the same time.

There was a pause as they stared at each other, disconcerted.

"This explains so much," Jessica said, more to herself than either of them.

"Why are you here?" Adam asked again, more mildly this time. "It's kinda late, aren't you on flood watch or something?"

"There's something I needed to see Sam about," Dean said. He eyed his brother warily. "Kinda late for you too – aren't you breaking curfew?"

Adam's shoulders hunched defensively. "I couldn't get away before. I'm going straight back and if I get caught I'll pay the fine, alright?"

It was tempting to ask what he would pay it _with_. "It's not the fine I worry about," Dean told him bluntly instead.

"I haven't touched anything since I got caught!" Adam said defensively, adding rather sulkily, "I couldn't if I wanted to, I don't have any money."

Tula appeared, not even blinking when she saw Adam. To Dean she said grimly, "Come on, let's take a look."

"Wait – what are you looking _for?_ " Adam demanded, alarmed.

"What do you think?" Dean said roughly.

"What – in _Sam's_ room? Are you kidding? Sam would never, _ever_ touch drugs!"

Dean's patience was wearing to a thread, not helped by his own feelings about raiding Sam's room in his absence. "Adam, out of you, me, Dad and Sammy, two of you have already done drugs and Ellen has a standing order to keep anything harder than beer out of my hands. So yeah, I'm gonna search Sam's room, because something's up with him and I want to know what the hell it is before he goes off the deep end. You don't like that, you can go home."

Adam was tense and silent for a moment, then his shoulders slumped. "Look … alright. I was on the way back from the library tonight when I ran into someone I know who knows Sam and they told me he's been acting weird for the last couple of days. I'd thought I'd better come and check on him."

"That's three of you telling me now," Dean said, and his stomach promptly tried to tighten some of the knots it was already tied in. "Great. Come on then, let's all of us go look."

"What about my curfew?" Adam grumbled.

"You're with me and it's a family emergency. I think they'll let you off this time."

"Will _you?_ "

Dean glared at him and was a little surprised at the smirk he got in return. He rolled his eyes. "Just this once. Don't push your luck."

 

xXx

 

"What the hell …" Adam breathed over Dean's shoulder, and Tula said something rude under her breath.

Sam's room looked much the way Dean would expect to find it if someone who wasn't very familiar with Sam's ways had been looking for something in there. It hadn't actually been turned over, not in the way Dean and Sam had ripped apart Adam's room when they were looking for his drugs, and to his experienced eyes it was clear that this hadn't been a burglary, but it had been searched very thoroughly, the drawers in the small, battered dresser sticking out and the pile of books and papers on the desk rifled through. Most of his small selection of clothes were thrown across his bed.

"It looks like my sister's room when she can't decide what to wear," Jessica commented, and she went to straighten up the books.

Perhaps that seemed normal to her, but nothing about the way the room looked seemed normal to Dean and apparently it struck Adam and Tula as odd too. He knew Sam well enough to know that this disorder was completely out of character, but it wasn't what he could see that was bothering him. There was something else tickling at the edges of his perception, but he wasn't sure what it was.

"Smells like someone's been striking flints in here," Tula commented warily.

Yes – that. The smell.

"Where do we start?" Adam asked. He sounded nervous.

"I don't think we do," Dean said, and he advanced into the room, looking around. He honestly wasn't sure what he was looking _for_ … until he stopped by the window ledge and saw something on the cill. A thin coating of oddly-coloured dust. Dean rubbed his fingers over it and squinted at them in the chancy light of Tula's lamp.

"What's that?" Adam asked, peering at Dean's fingers. Then he started slightly, eyes wide. "Is that – wait, was it on the window?" He turned to look and brushed as much as he could into his palm, squinting at it just as Dean had done. Then he sniffed it cautiously … and breathed on it. There was a tiny crinkle of a noise, barely audible over their breathing. "Brimstone!"

Dean dusted his fingers on his tunic, feeling shaky inside at this confirmation of his suspicions.

"Sam isn't taking drugs, is he," Adam said, staring at the smear of dust in his palm.

"Probably not," Dean admitted.

"Is – is he going crazy, like Dad?"

"Dad wasn't crazy. He drank too much and smoked opium, but he … had problems. It wasn't the same." Dean stared around blankly for a moment, only vaguely registering Tula's worried, wary gaze and Jessica's efforts to tidy up the mess

"So what are we going to do?" Adam asked, and there was a young, frightened note in his voice that snapped Dean's attention back to the present.

"There's someone I need to see about this, so I need you to do me a favour – can you do that?" he asked.

"Sure – "

"I need you to make sure Jess gets back to her lodgings safely, and when you get there – no, listen! – I borrowed Micho's pony cart and it's standing in the courtyard at Jess's lodge-house. I'm not gonna get home tonight, so I need you to take the cart back and then go to Henryks or Jody and let them know there's trouble and I might not get home tomorrow either. Will you do that for me?"

"I _can_ ," Adam said, making a face, "but if I've got to walk back here – "

"Stay at Ellen's tonight and come back in the morning," Dean said at once. "I don't need you getting mugged on top of everything else."

For a wonder, Adam took this reasonably well. "Duh, Dean, I'm not stupid! But if I've got to walk back tomorrow, I'm gonna miss my morning classes."

All Dean could think was that he really hoped Adam missing a few classes was the worst they could look forward to, but he wasn't about to say that.

"I can let your tutors know where you are," Jessica offered.

"Thanks. But what are you going to do?" he asked Dean, worried.

"I'll keep watch here for Sam coming back," Tula put in.

"Whatever you do, don't confront him," Dean warned her. "Send someone to find me – "

"But where will you be?"

"I'm going over to the Heralds' Collegium."

Tula's eyes widened. "That bad, huh? What's he likely to do?" she asked curtly, and it was the former soldier in her who spoke.

"If I'm right, Sam's the one who's been setting fires in the city," Dean said reluctantly.

Adam spluttered a protest. "No, no way – "

But Tula gave Dean a hard stare and nodded. "I'll send someone to warn Ellua and the others to keep watch tonight." She and Ellua Threegoats weren't the only former soldiers running local boarding houses and other local businesses, and they all knew each other. "I'll get word to Claeton too while I'm at it, he's got a head on his shoulders and he'll know how to handle this."

"Don't start a panic, nothing might happen," Dean said hurriedly.

"Teach your grandmother!" she said scornfully.

"Look - Sam's likely to go after people he knows," Dean warned them, and that was when he really began to feel sick to his stomach. If the thing that was riding Sam hurt anyone … if people connected the fire-raising to him …

"Marvellous. All right then." Tula jabbed a finger at Adam. "You warn Ellen Harvelle and Dean's people at the Watch House. And you, Jessica, better if you stay here with me tonight. You can sit this out in my back room."

"There's got to be more I can do than that!" Jessica protested.

"There is. There's a back door out of my quarters into the street that Sam doesn't know about. If he comes back and kicks up rough, you can slip out and get help."

"No! I'm not going to hide when I could be helping. I might not have grown up in the lower city like the rest of you, but I'm not some pampered idiot either!"

"Never said you were," Dean told her, "but Jess – this ain't funny and we ain't talking normal fires." He had to stop and swallow for a moment, for suddenly he could make a connection he had never made before, and the bile rose up in the back of his throat. "I – I watched my mom and step-mom burn to death before I turned twelve years old, and nothing anybody did could save them."

"Sam didn't do that," Adam snapped, horrified.

"Yeah, but I think he did, Adam. Maybe not knowingly, but he's the only one of us who was there both times, and he's the only one with some sort of connection to every single site that's burned in the city." For a moment Dean remembered Sam's questions about the temple in Stonepickers Row, the way he hadn't looked at Dean as he asked about the priests. The way he knew all about the temple even though he had no real personal connection to it.

The temple of Bel, the goddess of fire, whose priests knew about fire demons.

"But why would he do that?" Adam was saying, and there was a note of desperate denial in it that hurt. Dean was very familiar with that kind of denial.

"Maybe he's a FireStarter," Jessica said.

"But I thought … don't people with Gifts get Chosen?"

"Not all of them," Tula replied grimly. "The Companions are picky. Probably why they call it _Choosing_."

"But the Heralds can stop him, right? Help him?"

Dean wondered where Adam had learned to put such faith in Heralds. He certainly hadn't learned it at home in the Strangers Quarter – off-hand, he couldn't think of anyone he was acquainted with who would, not even fellow Watch Officers who had occasional contact with justices like Herald Asrel. There weren't enough of them, they were never _there;_ the lower part of the city – the poorer part – had to manage without them. And even though he was on the verge of going directly to their Collegium to beg for Castiel's help, Dean wasn't indulging in excess optimism. He trusted Castiel to know what to do to free Sam from the demon – _if_ that was what had happened to him.

Getting Sam out of the mess he was in afterwards would be a whole different matter.

 

xXx

 

Of course, gaining entrance to the Heralds' Collegium while in the company of a trainee Herald and his Companion was one thing; doing so on his own, late in the evening, was something else entirely, as Dean rapidly discovered. His Watch uniform was only good enough to prevent the fresh-faced young Palace Guardsman at the first gatehouse from throwing him out on his ear. All other requests, protests and demands fell on deaf ears.

No, the Guardsman in question would not send a messenger to the Collegium to find Castiel; was Dean aware of how late it was? No, he most certainly would _not_ grant Dean admittance. He was there to stop random people from finding their way into the Palace, and that (he strongly implied) included scruffy, uncouth Watch officers from the less salubrious corners of Haven. Dean could leave a message if he insisted, at his own risk and using his own writing materials (the Guardsman's pen, ink and paper were for writing reports, not notes), which would be delivered to the Collegium the following morning, or he could come back in the morning, with no guarantee of seeing Castiel anyway.

And this, right here, was the kind of shit that caused such bad feeling between the City Watch and the various Guard outfits in Haven. It wasn't the senior ranks in the Guard who generally caused friction in their dealings with Watch officers – although they had their moments too – but the much lower ranks, who liked to think of themselves as being in some way superior to the constabulary. Yet Dean was willing to bet that even Jo had seen more dangerous situations in the last six months than this boy was likely to see in the next five years of his career, short of war breaking out.

It made his blood boil.

He took a step back and looked the Guardsman up and down for a few long moments, noting the crisp new bars stitched onto his crisp, dark blue uniform.

"So … Corporal. You got a name?"

The Guardsman gripped his pike a little more firmly (presumably it was a largely ceremonial weapon, given how unwieldy it would be to use it in the close confines of the Guard Box) and lifted his chin.

"Corporal Merrit," he said crisply. There was a noticeable pause before he added, _"Sir."_

"Uh huh." Dean nodded. "And how old are you, kid? Eighteen?"

The lighting wasn't great, but he could still see the sudden flush of scarlet up Corporal Merrit's neck and face.

"I don't see how my – "

"You know what I was doing when I was eighteen?" Dean interrupted him. "On my eighteenth birthday, I arrested a triple rapist who liked to carve up his victims with a filleting knife." He gave Merrit a bland, unfriendly smile. "'Course, that was going on for six years ago and back then I was just a constable. These days I'm a captain. You noticed I'm a captain, right?"

"I – "

"Because I'm starting to think that _you_ think I'm some junior constable, who came all the way up here from the lower city just so you could have a little fun with me and laugh about it later with your buddies back at the barracks. And I'm wondering just what made a nice, shiny, new corporal like you think that."

Corporal Merrit spluttered unhappily.

"Because you know what? I got a hell of a lot better things to do than drag my ass up here just for shits and giggles. And maybe if you'll stop and think about it for a couple breaths, it'll occur to you that when I come here at a really crummy hour of the night and ask to see someone at the Collegium urgently, _I probably have a really good reason!_ You hearing me now, Corporal?"

"Is there a problem here, gentlemen?"

Dean nearly leapt out of his skin. "Holy _shit_ , where the fuck did you come from?"

Standing to one side was a Herald, his uniform nearly luminous in the raw light of the lantern hanging from the roof of the Guard Box. Even more glowing white was the shape of the Companion standing a few steps behind him, and –

How in the nine hells did something that big, that white and that horse-shaped, complete with _hooves_ , manage to move so silently on cobbles?

"I do apologise," the Herald said mildly. "I didn't mean to startle you."

Something in the way his eyes crinkled at the corners told Dean that this wasn't entirely true. It was small consolation that Corporal Merrit was almost as spooked as he was by their sudden appearance.

"Sorry," Dean said uncomfortably. "Didn't mean to swear."

"Not at all. Lola has forgiven you already."

Lola?

The Companion tossed her head and fixed a remarkably knowing blue eye on Dean. Oh … right. No, wait – Lola?

"Sorry, ma'am," Dean said to her, wrestling the memory of a dancing girl he'd met at a faire back into a mental box. She'd been called Lola too, and had amazing legs - among other things.

The Herald was studying him with a hint of amusement in his eyes. "How can we help you at this time of night, Captain Winchester?"

At that Dean eyed him more warily, for he was certain he'd never even seen this Herald before in his life. Watch officers were trained to recognise certain ranks of Heralds, of course – the two individuals with braid on their uniforms were the monarch and the Heir, and anyone with coloured piping of some kind on their tunic was a member of the Heraldic Circle – but in the general run of things, a Watch officer from the lower city was unlikely to encounter a Herald of higher rank than a City Judge.

This man had dark piping on the neck and hem of his tunic, guaranteeing that he was of much higher rank than Dean would normally expect to meet in his entire career. He was a good six inches shorter than Dean, slender and fit-looking, probably in early middle-age, with dark hair that was receding a little at the temples, and kind-looking, but very sharp, eyes.

The eyes were the giveaway in what might otherwise be dismissed as a very mild-looking face. If Dean had seen him in anything other than Whites he might have been fooled into thinking he was a scribe or in some other innocuous occupation. The eyes belied it though. Kindly they might look, but they didn't miss a thing.

"He wants to see Trainee Castiel, Herald Kolsen, sir," Corporal Merrit was bleating.

"I see." It looked like he really did. "Thank you, Corporal, I'll handle this."

"You will, huh?" The sceptical comment slipped out before Dean could censor it.

The crinkles around Herald Kolsen's eyes deepened. "I will. If you'd like to come with me, we'll see if we can find Castiel." He paused for a moment, then added, "It might be quicker if we ride, since it's getting late and it's a long walk to the Collegium."

He swung himself up into Lola's saddle, then offered a hand to Dean with a small smile.

Dean grimaced and looked at Lola, who turned her head to observe him. "Sorry about this," he told her. "Where I come from, the only things we ride are logging wagons."

 

xXx

 

The ride was mostly a silent one, except for at one point when Dean felt compelled to ask, "How do you know my name?"

"I'm the Lord Marshal's Herald," Kolsen replied. "I have some involvement with the City Guard and the Watch."

"Uh … right. So you know my District Commander?"

"I do," Kolsen agreed mildly. Before Dean had time to worry over this, he added, "And I'm acquainted with your former mentor, Captain Singer."

"Huh." That _was_ a surprise.

"You'd be surprised at the people I know, Captain. It comes with the job."

Dean shut up. Part of him wanted to ask if Kolsen had known his father, but the answer might be 'yes', and he wasn't ready to hear what might follow.

Minutes later Lola trotted into the now-familiar stable yard at the Heralds' Collegium, which was aglow with lamps and bustling with activity. Judging by the mules and packs, and the two Companions being saddled and tacked up by actual grooms rather than their Chosen, someone was heading out on circuit. It seemed an odd hour for that to Dean, but he knew next to nothing about the scheduling of Heralds' duties and since Kolsen didn't seem to see anything remarkable in it, he put it out of his mind.

A third groom ran up as they both dismounted, and Kolsen surrendered Lola to him with an affectionate pat on the Companion's shoulder.

"If you'd like to follow me, Captain," he said to Dean, and he led him into the building.

They took a different route to the one Castiel had taken when Dean had been here before. Kolsen led him down a long, winding passage, through several sets of doors, and into a place which, if Dean was forced to judge it by its furnishings and number of Guards, surely had to be part of the palace proper.

The idea set the flesh on the back of his neck crawling. Not that he had any real idea of what a palace would look like inside, or what the people living in it did there, although he had worked with an odd enough cross-section of individuals over the years to know that it was more than just the royal family's main residence. Someone had once said that it was like the headquarters of the Watch Command, only much, much fancier –

Well, Dean didn't put much stock in that, but when Kolsen led him into a room that was obviously an office, and not much bigger than his own back at the Watch House, albeit significantly nicer, he did begin to wonder.

"Will you take a seat?" Kolsen invited him, waving to a positively cosy-looking leather upholstered chair in front of his desk. "I apologise for the clutter."

There _was_ an awful lot of paper everywhere, although it was all very neatly arranged. "You should see my office," Dean said, sitting on the edge of the chair uneasily.

Kolsen chuckled. "I can well imagine, and I'm sure you have even less time to devote to paperwork than I do. Now – there are a number of places Castiel could be at this time of the evening, so if you'll forgive me for a moment, I need to send a couple of pages to hunt him down."

He left the room, and Dean was left to contemplate the almost eerie calm of the palace. He wondered what it must be like to work every day in a place that was so clean and quiet and controlled. It was a feat of imagination that was utterly beyond him.

He wondered if Adam was all right, driving Micho's cart back to the Roadhouse Inn; if Tula had managed to warn people discreetly enough; if Jessica was still safe or if she had decided to do something rash on her own initiative.

He wondered where Sam was and what that thing riding him was making him do now.

Please all the gods, let there be no more fires …

A hand touched his shoulder and Dean was out of his chair before he fully realised where he was or what he was doing.

Herald Kolsen was standing several feet away, his empty hands held out at his sides to signal the lack of a threat. "You were asleep," he said calmly. "I'm not surprised, you look as though you haven't slept properly for some time. Perhaps if you were to put the knife away …?"

Flushing uncomfortably, Dean slid the blade back into his wrist sheath. Strictly speaking, he wasn't supposed to be armed with anything more than the Bully all Watch officers carried, but he'd learned the hard way not to be without some kind of back-up weapon. He kept a set of brass knuckledusters too; there wasn't a man or woman in his Watch who didn't.

Kolsen didn't seem inclined to comment, though. He opened the door to admit a young boy carrying a tray loaded with a steaming pitcher, cups and a plate of small pies, and this was quickly deposited in a clear spot on the desk.

"Please sit down, Captain," Kolsen said, when the boy had left and the door was shut again. "Castiel should be here shortly. Let's have some tea while we wait, hm?"

"Not sure I got time for a tea party," Dean said, bemused, but he gingerly sat down again.

Kolsen made a noncommittal "hmm" sound, and poured a cup of tea from the pitcher, passing it to Dean. He poured himself a cup too, pushed the dish of pies towards Dean, and went to take a seat behind his desk.

"In the interests of full disclosure," he said, "I should tell you that I'm aware of the nature of the problem Castiel has been helping you with. He made the Dean and the Queen's Own aware of it when he first arrived at the Collegium after being Chosen, and I was told because I've been tracking the spread of the fires in the city."

Dean had been about to take a sip of the tea, but he lowered the cup untasted at this and eyed Kolsen warily. "And what problem's that?" he asked, because it was just possible that Castiel had given them some manner of cover story, rather than the absolute truth.

Kolsen sat back in his chair, holding his cup loosely in both hands, and regarded Dean mildly for a moment or two. "This conversation will go a great deal more easily if you don't fence with me, Captain."

Well … Dean had never been one for making things easy on anyone, not even himself. He grinned humourlessly at the Herald. "Never touched a foil in my life."

"No, I imagine a bow or axe would come more naturally to you, with your background. By the way, are you aware that your people are illegal immigrants?"

This unexpected non-sequitur left Dean floundering. "I … what?"

Kolsen smiled at him. "Well – technically you and your brothers can call yourselves citizens, because you were indisputably born within Valdemar's borders, but your parents and grandparents settled illegally. And they were well aware that they had done so – a significant portion of your father's papers were forgeries when he arrived in Haven looking for work, although the full extent only became clear after he died." He took a sip of his tea, watching Dean over the rim of the cup.

Dean stared at him, mentally reeling at this. "Nobody said anything to _me_ about that," he managed.

"We took the view that it was no longer relevant by that point," Kolsen explained, "and consequently a minor detail in the bigger picture."

Dean began to get angry. "It ever occur to you that I had a right to know that _minor detail_?"

"I'm telling you now, aren't I?"

"Bullshit."

"As you wish." Kolsen gave him a few moments to digest this, then added, "That aside, we did send people south to investigate just how many illegal foresting communities had established themselves on that border over the years."

"We paid taxes," Dean said abruptly, remembering the annual bean-counting exercise that had drained some of the joy out of Harvestfest for the whole community.

"I think a more accurate term would be 'protection money'," Kolsen corrected him apologetically. "Your village was paying off the nearest sawmill community, who were hiding their presence on the border and, not so incidentally, profiting enormously from the illegal logging and ancillary industries your people were carrying out. Nor were they the only ones profiting from it. We've been having a busy time, over the past few years, sorting it all out. To be honest, I suspect we've only begun to scratch the surface of it."

"Illegal logging," Dean said flatly.

"Certainly. Granted, the forests of that particular stretch of the border haven't been managed quite as assiduously as, say, the Forest of Sorrows in the north, but that's partly because the border _is_ somewhat poorly defined and ownership of the land on either side is either unclear or in dispute." Kolsen made a wry gesture. "Unfortunately, that makes illegal logging potentially highly problematic - Rethwellan is an ally and we wouldn't want anything to jeopardise that."

"So - what? You planning to evict them all?" Dean demanded. The thought made his stomach clench, despite the fact that he'd never been back to Dell's Crossing.

"Would that bother you?" Kolsen asked, watching his face narrowly.

"Fuck, yeah, it bothers me! There were good people there, honest people who just wanted to live their lives." Dean's breath hitched for a second. "My grandparents are still there! Least, as far as I know."

"Your family means a great deal to you."

"Family's all I got," Dean muttered.

Fortunately for his composure, before Kolsen could say anything else there was a knock on the door and another Herald entered the room with Castiel following in his wake.

"Captain Winchester - Herald Ansel, the Queen's Own," Kolsen introduced them, just as though it was an everyday occurrence for a lower city Watch Captain to meet the most powerful Herald in the kingdom.

"Captain," Herald Ansel greeted him, shaking his hand. He had a firm grip and an open, friendly face that had, just _had_ , to be the best front that Dean had ever seen put up, for no way could a man in his position be that open and honest for real.

"Right," Dean said slowly, and he fixed Castiel with a hard look. "You want to explain to me why a bunch of the Heralds' Circle suddenly know all about my stuff?"

If he expected to discomfit him, he was disappointed.

"Did you expect the two of us to be able to handle this alone, Dean?" Castiel asked him.

"Well, I don't know, Cas – you seemed pretty damn confident about it before!"

"That was before you grudgingly revealed the extent of the _garuya's_ association with your family," he retorted coolly. "We are not dealing with a creature recently summoned from the Abyss anymore – Azazel has been on this plane for at least two generations, and potentially a great many more. He has been fed multiple times, he has almost certainly possessed a human before, and he has chosen his new vessel. I can confront him alone if I must, but I would infinitely prefer not to. The risk to others is too great."

There were many things Dean wanted to say at that moment, but what actually came out was: "He's taken Sam."

Castiel blinked. "Are you sure?"

"No, I'm not sure! But – look, his girl came to me when I got back from the Pottery District – shit, did you get my message about the Pottery District fire?"

"A Herald has already been sent to assist the Watch there," Kolsen put in.

"Right … good." Dean rubbed a hand over his face, wishing he wasn't so tired, and took the cup of tea Herald Ansel offered him without thinking.

"Sam's girl came to you," he prompted Dean.

"Yeah, right – Jessica. She said he was acting real weird and she was worried, so I drove up here with her and saw Tula – that's his landlady – and she said he was acting weird too. And Adam turned up, saying the same stuff, so we checked out his room and it looked like a pack of feral dogs had got in, and me and Adam, we found brimstone on the window cill." Dean took a gulp of the tea, and made a face. "Headache. Been a hell of a day. Head won't stop buzzing."

"Let's all sit down for a moment, shall we?" Ansel suggested, and he steered Dean back into the chair in front of Kolsen's desk while Castiel grabbed two more chairs from the back of the room.

Kolsen was rummaging in one of his desk drawers. "Give me your cup," he told Dean, and he tipped some powder into it from a paper packet and topped the cup up from the teapot. "Headache powder," he added, at Dean's wary look. "Tastes like toasted pigeon crap, just to warn you."

"Can't taste worse than Watch House tea," Dean said philosophically, and he took a swallow. And screwed his face up. " _Yikes_ …"

Kolsen's eyes crinkled at the corners. "It rises to the challenge."

"Besides the fire in the Pottery District and the evidence of Sam's friends, is there anything else that happened today that is relevant?" Castiel asked.

"Nah, don't think so – not unless you count the goddess." Dean frowned, then saw the way they were all looking at him. "Not a real goddess! Least, I hope not. Woman from outkingdom claiming to be a prophetess and reborn goddess of death – had to get the Temple Guard out to her shop, which, let me tell you, is going to make me real popular 'round there for a while. Folks get touchy when you mess with self-proclaimed goddesses."

Castiel sat up sharply. "Dean – did this woman have a name?"

Dean blinked at him. "Yeah, she calls herself Kali." He snorted. "'Scuse me – _Lady_ Kali."

Castiel let out a breath and gave a tiny shake of his head. _"Gabriel …"_

"What?"

"Kali is the woman my brother Gabriel left Jkatha with. I believe she does have the gift of prophecy, and it wouldn't surprise me if she also claims to be a goddess. Some of the traditions of the far southern lands include the worship of so-called living goddesses, although whether she possesses actual divinity is not for me to say."

Dean couldn't think of anything to say to that. "On the upside," he offered finally, "that increases the chances of your brother still being here in Haven, right?"

"If you consider that a positive thing, and I'm not entirely sure I do," Castiel grumbled.

"Well, Kali seemed to know all about my problem and said I should pray for rain," Dean told him, "and I told her to get outta here, because if there's one thing we don't need more of right now, it's rain."

"I don't know about that," Kolsen interjected mildly. "If we really are dealing with a fire demon, rain might be the most useful suggestion she could offer."

"Yeah, she wasn't interested in getting me off her back and out of her shop one little bit," Dean said, unable to suppress the bitter sarcasm in his voice, but Kolsen only looked amused. Dean had to admit, privately, that this made him warm to the Herald a little more. His own superiors were distinguished by an overwhelming lack of humour in the main.

"If that was the best a prophetess and possible goddess could advise against a demon, forgive me if I feel a little pessimism here," Herald Ansel commented.

Dean hesitated, for it suddenly occurred to him that rain hadn't been her only suggestion, but he couldn't quite remember –

"Even if Kali is truly who she claims to be, the mortal goddesses of the far south are demi-deities at best," Castiel said, interrupting his train of thought. "They are neither infallible or nor all-knowing. Better by far to rely upon methods I know will work."

"Well, for anything to work, we first have to find Sam Winchester," Kolsen said firmly, "and preferably without half the city going up in flames in the meantime."

"I got warnings out to a bunch of folks before I came here," Dean said. "Folks connected to me and Sam."

"Good," Kolsen said. "Then they won't be surprised when we send them reinforcements."

Dean gave him a jaundiced look and set his cup down. "You planning on sending a bunch of white-shirts into the lower city? Sure you wouldn't like to send a crier and a troupe of jugglers with 'em, just in case they aren't obvious enough?"

"I wasn't planning on sending Heralds, no," Kolsen replied mildly. "Not uniformed Heralds, at any rate. I have other operatives at my disposal."

"I'll bet you have," Dean said frankly, then wished he hadn't. "Sorry, sorry, I just …" He rubbed his eyes. "I've been up awhile."

"You're _exhausted_ ," Herald Ansel said firmly. "Let us take over the task of finding your brother. Get some sleep and be ready for when you need to go to work."

He shot a look at Castiel, who immediately stood up and offered a hand to Dean. "Come, _Kapitane_ , you can rest on my bed again while I consider ways to trap and remove this _garuya_."

"Not gonna sleep," Dean warned him, but he swayed on his feet as he stood up.

Maybe just a nap, then.

 

xXx

 

"I've rarely known you be that unsubtle," Kolsen remarked, when Castiel had led Captain Winchester away.

Ansel rubbed his brow, grimacing. "I've rarely _needed_ to be that unsubtle with someone over the age of sixteen. But he clearly needed the extra push, unless I misread the situation completely and that 'pigeon crap' you dosed him with really was a headache powder." Kolsen gave him an enigmatic smile. "That's what I thought. So if he does sleep now, it'll be until dawn at least, and if he's rested then perhaps he'll be less likely to upset every Gifted person for a mile around. Castiel _swore_ that he was only a minor Mindspeaker!"

"Perhaps he was until recently." Kolsen rummaged in his drawer, found another headache powder – a real one this time - and doctored the other man's tea for him. "Stress is a well-known factor in Gifts suddenly developing. Regardless of that, someone will need to talk to Winchester about it when this matter is dealt with. We can't have an unshielded Mindspeaker running a Watch House in the lower city – it's bound to come out, and then it'll cast doubt on every successful conviction he's ever made. And it doesn't matter if his Gift is strong or weak, the common people of his sector would never trust him again."

"He does have some sort of shielding – I could feel it coming and going the whole time he was here. Not nearly adequate though." Ansel sighed. "I'll make a note. Perhaps Raylor could have a chat with him. To be honest, with a latent Gift like that I'm surprised he was never Chosen."

_There are more Gifted than there are Companions, and not all are suitable for the task._

"I imagine Taver just told you that not everyone can be a Herald," Kolsen commented, watching his face.

"Something like that," Ansel admitted. He gave his colleague a narrow look. "I suppose you're planning to recruit Winchester as one of your 'other operatives'."

"That would be rather redundant, don't you think? He's already doing an excellent job where he is, and now that he knows me, he may be amenable to offering occasional assistance elsewhere."

Ansel took a sip of his tea and made a face at the taste. "You're assuming he'll still trust us after this. Actually, I'm not entirely sure he trusts us now."

"I'd be worried if he did, considering his personal history," Kolsen replied. "Now – who do we have available to send into the lower city at short notice?"

 

xXx

 

"Not gonna sleep," Dean said again, as Castiel all but carried him over the threshold of his room and lowered him onto the bed.

"As you wish," Castiel said gravely. "But you should at least lie down. I need to devise some strategies and that will take time."

Dean lay back against the pillows at his urging, but his eyes tracked Castiel as he pulled out his desk chair and sat down, and when he spoke next it was in the broad dialect of his childhood; something Castiel suddenly realised he had been steadily shedding over the past weeks when the two of them spoke together in Jkathan.

"You can fix it, right? Get the _garuya_ out of Sammy so's he's not hurt?"

Castiel hesitated, then said gently, "I'll do my very best, Dean, but getting the _garuya_ out of its host isn't enough – I must banish it from this world too, or it'll return and try to possess him again. Do you understand?"

Dean stared at him in silence for a long time. His eyes were heavy and rather unfocused, but his mental shields were patchy and Castiel could tell that his thoughts were both groggy and frightened. At length, he said, "You think I should pray for rain?"

Taken by surprise, Castiel found himself smiling a little. "To whom would you pray?"

"Anyone that's listening."

"When this is over you and I must have a long talk, and one of the things we'll discuss is the danger in casting your prayers too wildly. Why don't you sleep instead?" He got up and reached over Dean for a blanket to cover him.

"You gonna be in my dreams if I do?"

Castiel froze. Dean's eyelids had dropped completely and there was nothing on his face but exhaustion, but the question had been in Valdemaran and had sounded … curious.

"I don't know. You'll have to tell me when you wake," he said quietly, but he didn't think Dean heard him; his breathing had deepened and levelled out as he dropped into sleep.

_I hope that teaches you a lesson_ , Eslan commented, as he finished covering Dean and returned to his chair. The Companion sounded amused rather than censorious.

_I didn't think he'd recognise it was actually me._ Castiel paused as he reached for one of his books. _But he probably didn't realise what he was saying anyway. Just as well._ He set the book on the desk and flipped it open.

_Perhaps you should consider discussing it with him when you have that 'long talk'._

Castiel frowned at this. _What do you mean?_

Eslan sighed. _You do realise that it's not usual even for Mindspeakers to be able to wander in and out of each other's dreams the way you do?_

Castiel felt a pang of guilt. _His shields are very weak –_

_They weren't so weak before you met him._

_Are you saying I damaged them in some way? Eslan, have I_ harmed _Dean?_

_No, of course not. Calm down._

_Then what do you mean by that? When we met it seemed like his Gift was weak, but –_

_It's not about his Gift, it's about the relationship between you._ Eslan paused, but when Castiel waited he sighed again. _It's not appropriate for me to spell this out for you. But before you talk to Dean – and I strongly agree that you should talk to him – you should first think very carefully about your relationship with him and what you intend to do with it._

_That's remarkably unhelpful,_ Castiel told him, annoyed.

Perhaps, but now is not the time. So put it aside, and concentrate on what you're going to do about this demon. Kolsen and Ansel are looking to you to provide at least part of a plan.

For a moment, Castiel wanted to argue with him. Then he recognised the foolishness of that, and forced himself to let it go.

_We're going to have to construct a trap, but I suspect we'll need Dean's input if we want to successfully lure Sam into it …_


	7. Chapter 7

The Heralds' Collegium had hot and cold running water and wash-tubs that drained themselves through pipes in the floor when you pulled a stopper out. It took reminding himself that this shit was _expensive_ to prevent Dean from just playing with the whole set-up for a while. Well … that and the fact that it was now nearly an hour past dawn and his brother was still roaming the city somewhere, possessed by a demon.

He supposed it was typical of his luck that, for the first time in his life, he had a hot bath he didn't have to pay for, and he couldn't simply enjoy it.

Dean was drying himself with one of a seemingly limitless supply of soft, _soft_ drying cloths when Castiel walked into the bathing room without knocking. Dean wasn't quite quick enough to get one of the towels around him, but this time Castiel didn't blush or stare or even look away, even though Dean was fairly sure he was doing at least one of those things himself. He merely raised an eyebrow at Dean and held up a bundle of familiar blue and tan canvas and linen.

" _Kapitane_ Claeton has sent you a clean uniform," he said calmly. "He apologises if it is a little large – you are slenderer than he."

"Claeton did?" Dean was bemused. "Why?"

"Herald Kolsen has ensured that the city is on a state of alert. I believe most of the Watch Houses have been informed that there is a "spree arsonist" at large." Castiel shrugged. "A not inaccurate description as far as it goes, and it may shortly have the benefit of sending Sam to earth in a familiar place for a while. We need to be prepared for that possibility."

Dean frowned. "I dunno, if it was me I wouldn't be heading anywhere obvious."

"But you are not a _garuya_. They are cunning, yes, but are much at the mercy of their essential natures and somewhat influenced by the more primitive urges of the host body. Sam might not go to a familiar place, any more than you would, but Sam is not in control of himself anymore. He'll have places where he feels comfortable and safe, and the _garuya_ will be looking for a safe haven, so it's likely that it will allow itself to be guided by Sam's instincts in this."

"So it could head back to Sam's lodgings, or even to Ellen's." Dean concluded. He hitched his towel up awkwardly. "Cas …"

"Yes?"

"You gonna let me get dressed now?"

"I wasn't aware that I was stopping you," Castiel said dryly.

Dean blinked. "Seriously?" Castiel raised his eyebrows and the look he gave Dean was just shy of challenging. Dean scowled and circled a finger in the air. "Turn around."

Castiel rolled his eyes, but turned his back. "You and I are going to have a conversation about this later," he said after a moment or two.

If he hadn't been less than halfway into his underwear, Dean might have taken flight at that statement. "What, you want to talk about my awesome body, Cas?" he blustered, trying to brazen it out. "Bring it."

"As I'm not the one who insisted on me turning around, I think it can wait for now."

"Yeah, yeah." He pulled the heavy canvas trousers on – they were going to need belting in if he wasn't to lose them every other step – and yanked the shirt over his head. Just in time for Castiel to turn around again. "Ain't nothing to talk about."

"Enjoy that fantasy a while longer, if it comforts you." Castiel looked amused. He pulled a folded piece of parchment out of his belt pouch, opened it out and held it up. "Do you recognise this sigil?"

Dean stared at the thick black outline of the rune drawn on the paper as he tucked the shirt in and laced up the neck. "I … yeah. Now you mention it, Kali showed me that rune, told me to hold it in my head when I confronted a … a thing. I didn't know the word."

"A _shtuga_?" Castiel suggested. "It's a southern word, for an evil spirit."

"Yeah, I guess. How did you know?"

"You told me about it last night."

"I never," Dean said, affronted.

"I don't think you were aware you were doing so," Castiel said, the look of amusement deepening. "You were talking in your sleep. The matter seemed to be bothering you, so … I have searched my books and found several runes of protection and containment that are very similar to this, but not so refined. It would seem Lady Kali has done us a great favour."

"Yeah, well don't get too excited. If that woman's ever done anyone any favours that haven't been twice as useful to her somehow, I'll eat my Bully," Dean grumbled.

"She appears to have made a most unfavourable impression upon you," Castiel observed, curious.

"I don't take kindly to folk who trick the locals into doing shit for them by scaring them with talk of controlling spirits," Dean said flatly, picking up his belt and threading it through the loops on his breeches. He looked at Castiel. "You said she's the one Gabriel ran off with – how much do you know about her?"

"Not as much as I would like. I must confess that I discounted much of what Gabriel's mother told me as she's somewhat given to exaggeration when she's distressed."

"I'm thinking this time she wasn't exaggerating. You might want to start worrying about him, if he really did come here with Kali."

He wasn't expecting the cynical smile Castiel gave him.

"I made a decision to stop worrying about Gabriel almost before I left the nursery. It would be pointless and I assure you he wouldn't regard it in the least. Gabriel has always done what Gabriel wants to do, with little consideration for the effect his antics have upon others. I don't believe him to be entirely heartless, and I have more affection for him than I do for most of my family, but I discovered early that the best way to love him is from a distance. Close proximity only results in disappointment and discomfort."

Dean stared. "If he was one of my brothers, _I'd_ be worrying."

"I can say with complete confidence that he is nothing like either of your brothers." Castiel tipped his head to one side, studying him. "In any case, what would you have me do? Whilst the evidence would seem to suggest that he may be here in Haven, so far I have had no word of him. It's pointless to worry about his safety when I have no idea where he is or what he's doing. In case you've forgotten, we have a far more pressing problem."

"I guess." But Castiel's dismissal of Gabriel troubled him, and it must have shown in his face, because the other man's expression softened a little.

"Dean, if I worried about Gabriel as often as he gave me cause to, I would have no peace. I've learned to … put it aside, just as I had to put aside my fears for my sister Anna when she also left us so suddenly. Besides, it would be hypocritical of me, don't you think? I am sure Anna at least suffered just as many concerns over me when I took vows. We each sought our own selfish path out of our father's house, and have no right to chide the others for it."

Not sure what to say to this, Dean picked up the uniform jerkin and shrugged himself into it. "I didn't know you had a sister who ran away too," he said, focusing on tying the heavy laces. "Do you ever hear from her?"

"She wrote to me often before I came here." Castiel smiled faintly. "She became a mercenary and the last I heard of her was in Seejay. She was a bodyguard to the Grand Vizier's daughters. I'll write to her and tell her where I am, when this business is done with."

"Guess we'd better wrap it up quickly then."

"That would be best for a number of reasons," Castiel agreed. "Come - we should eat breakfast while we devise a plan of action."

 

xXx

 

Breakfast was porridge with cream and a choice of honey or fruit preserves with it, and fresh-baked rolls with butter or cream cheese to spread on them. Had he been offered a free meal like this almost anywhere else, Dean would have had no hesitation in gorging himself. After all, the opportunity didn't come along very often.  

For some reason, being offered this meal in the middle of the palace while surrounded by Heralds made him wary and self-conscious though. He accepted a bowl of porridge and declined everything else, leaving Castiel to give him an admonishing look and push the jar of preserves towards him pointedly.

"Eat a proper meal, Dean," he said in Jkathan, under the cover of talk between Kolsen, Ansel and a couple of other Heralds who had joined them in Herald Ansel's office for the meal and meeting.

"I'm good," Dean muttered.

"Eat, you fool. There may not be an opportunity for lunch today."

"Quit mothering me, will you? I'm a grown-ass man!"

"Then act like one. I should hope your mother would spank you."

It was probably just as well that Dean couldn't immediately think of an appropriate response to that. But he took a dollop of the preserves, and then, somewhat defiantly, a bread roll with cream cheese. Sure, he could have refused to do either, but he'd never really been one for cutting off his nose to spite his face.

"You exasperate me very much," Castiel remarked unexpectedly.

"It's a gift."

"I know very well that you don't even like porridge."

"Been gossiping with Ellen again, huh?"

Castiel made a frustrated sound in his throat, and Dean found himself grinning around a bite of roll. Then the office door opened and one of the Palace Guards ushered in Adam and Jessica. Dean abandoned his meal at once to go to them.

"What are you two doing here? Are you all right? Adam, how in hells did you get back here so quick?"

"Got a ride with a Herald," Adam said, and for a second his face lit up with a delighted grin. "Dean, that is so amazing – it's like the Companion's hardly moving, but it goes like _whoosh!_ "

Dean smiled wryly. None of the Winchester boys had ever harboured a yen to be a Herald; Dean honestly doubted that many lower city kids did, because they all knew from a very early age that getting Chosen was something that happened to other people. He had seen one – _just_ one – Choosing in Lower Haven other than Castiel since he'd arrived in the city, and that had been when he was a thirteen year old runner at Exile's Gate Watch. At the time, he'd been only too aware of the mingled sense of pride and frustration among the local adults as a mild case of Choosing-fever had spread among the younger children, every one of them hoping desperately that he or she would be next. Until the day Eslan turned up, it hadn't happened. They'd seen half a dozen kids get taken for training as Healers, and one girl had been accepted by Bardic Collegium to everyone's bemusement, but not a single Herald had emerged in the sector.

Dean really hoped that Adam wasn't about to belatedly get starry-eyed about Companions. Keeping him on track was hard enough already. "Yeah, we'll have to find out what they feed 'em and get you some," he joked, and he turned to Jessica. "Jess, are you all right? Any sign of Sam last night?"

"I'm fine," she said at once, brushing off his concern, but she looked like she hadn't slept much. "He never came back to Tula's – or if he did, he didn't come inside. The neighbour's dog never stopped whining though."

"That could suggest he was nearby," Castiel's voice said quietly, behind Dean. "The presence of the _garuya_ will unsettle many creatures – they have an instinct for such things beyond our own and it will smell of smoke and death to them."

As though the words _smoke and death_ were a curse, for a split second Dean was back in Dell's Crossing, smelling the reek of bitter smoke and charred flesh as his parents' house burned down, a memory so visceral that he felt himself break out into a cold sweat –

"Captain Winchester?"

Someone touched his wrist and Dean jerked back to the present, staring around wildly. "What?"

Herald Kolsen was watching him in a way that Dean could only classify as 'careful' and there was an oddly pinched look to his expression that didn't sit well with his usual aura of extreme competence. Nor was he the only one; when Dean looked around at the others, Adam and Jessica only looked perplexed, but the other Heralds, Castiel included, were all a little pale and strained.

Not that Dean felt all that surprised, since this demon shit was enough to get to anyone and he was pretty sure even Heralds didn't deal with this stuff every day. Or even most days. The buzzing was back in his head, and it occurred to him that when this was all over – if it was _ever_ all over – he was going to have to visit that herbwife in Little Thread Street for some of her headache remedies, because he was probably going to be recovering from this for a _month_ …

The buzzing faded out, and everyone seemed to take a not-so-surreptitious deep breath. Unsettled, and suddenly conscious that Kolsen was still holding his wrist, Dean drew back, pulling himself free of the light grip.

"What?" he demanded again, and he winced a little at how aggressively it came out.

"We should be making plans," Kolsen told him mildly. "Time is passing, and I don't think any of us want to spend another night wondering where the next fire will be."

"Adam and Jess need to get to their classes – "

"I'll speak to the dean of the Unaffiliates," Herald Ansel said. "I think we're going to need everyone's input and help to put an end to this before anyone else dies. And I include your brother Sam in that," he added, at Dean's sharp look.

"The biggest problem will be covering multiple potential targets," Kolsen said. He waved Dean, Jessica and Adam over to the table in the centre of the room, and one of the other Heralds began moving the breakfast dishes to one side to clear a space to work on. "We can't spare enough of the Heralds and older trainees currently in Haven to cover them all, and I think it'll be risky to involve Guards and other Watch Officers beyond a point. Whoever works on this will need to know exactly what they're facing, and to be honest I'm sure many if not most of them will be sceptical of the existence of demons."

Dean thought of Captain Claeton, of Bela Talbot, and even of Jody and Henryks, and made a face. True, he was pretty sure Jody and Henryks would follow his lead on this, regardless of what they thought about demons – his people were awesome that way – but it was too risky.

"Doubt can make folks slow to react," he commented.

"And there must be no doubt in anyone's mind when they deal with this creature," Castiel put in. "It will not hesitate if you do, and with a human host it can kill in ways beyond the setting of fires. The host body will also be stronger than it was as a human." He spread several sheets of paper bearing odd designs on them across the table. "These are demon traps – there are a multitude of types, but these are physical traps to be drawn on the floor, or perhaps the ceiling, of a room. It is customary to place them before a doorway where there is the greatest opportunity to catch a demon, but I have known instances of them being placed before windows or even under a chair. It is said that there is one carved beneath the Marble Throne in Jkatha."

Dean's head came up at this. "Wait – my grandfather told me a story when I was a kid about a demon prince who was trapped when he tried to sit on the throne. Are you saying that was _true?_ "

Castiel's face lit up in a brief smile. "I think perhaps that particular tale is more allegory than fact, Dean, but I was told as a novice of the demon trap beneath the throne and I have no reason to believe it is anything other than truth, so far as the one who told me knew."

"Which is great, but the question is – do these things actually work?"

"They do, but with certain caveats," Castiel replied. "Obviously the trap must be drawn correctly – a single smudged line or symbol out of place can let the _garuya_ escape. They must be drawn in certain substances, and in the case of some – powders, liquids, dust – if they are smudged or damaged, or breached in any way, they will once again allow the creature to escape. And of course, the greatest risk comes once the _garuya_ is trapped."

"Catching a poisonous snake is one thing; knowing what to do with it afterwards is another," Kolsen commented, and Castiel nodded.

"Most truly said. Once the _garuya_ is trapped, its first weapon will be its voice. I cannot caution you all enough not to listen to the things it will say, or to engage it in conversation."

"But … if it's Sam …" Adam said uneasily.

"Even so," Castiel said firmly.

"And are we sure it's Sam Winchester?" asked one of the other Heralds, a bald, olive-skinned man who had been introduced to Dean as Herald Sitwell.

"No," Kolsen admitted, before anyone else could respond to this. "Circumstantial evidence is strongly indicative, however. Enough so that we must apprehend him anyway, even if it seems that he _hasn't_ been possessed. The demon clearly has a fixation on the Winchester family, and not only are they at risk, but also anyone associating with them – which includes us, at this point."

"What I don't understand," a female Herald put in, "is why the demon has waited this long to possess any of them." Her name was Maria; she was younger than Kolsen, with short dark hair and a strong, handsome face; and there was enough command in her manner that Dean hadn't needed to see the red piping on her uniform tunic to know that she had to be a senior member of the Heraldic Circle. "Why choose Sam Winchester over, say, his father? Wouldn't that have made more sense? Jon Winchester was an addict of some duration, wouldn't that have made him more vulnerable?"

Kolsen raised his eyebrows thoughtfully. "Castiel?"

Castiel hesitated for a moment. "I … have a theory about that, but one I can't offer much solid evidence for at present, especially as Jon Winchester is dead. I would need to meet Sam to be sure. Unfortunately, Azazel is one of a lower order of _garuyim_ that the author of my demonaries considered far less threatening than the greater demons, and therefore she wasted less time writing about it, so my knowledge is somewhat incomplete."

"It's capable of setting fires that could potentially wipe out entire tenement blocks," Herald Sitwell said incredulously. "In the right spot, it could set a fire that could take out half the city! That's a _lesser_ demon?"

Castiel shrugged. "Yes."

"I'm not sure I needed to know that," Sitwell muttered.

"Azazel is tethered – it cannot leave the near proximity of the Winchester family, and in order to do real damage it needs to possess one of them to give it a body. And like many lower order _garuyim_ , its ambitions are short-sighted, severely limiting the scope of the damage it can do. It has appetites that would surprise you with their trivial nature, for mostly it craves the experience of baser human passions, feeding off the emotions they stir – fear, anger, lust, gluttony. It hungers and wants to feel sated, and more than that, it wants to go beyond satiation into gross overindulgence."

"Someone told me Sam went to a cockfight the other night," Jessica offered. "That's - it's completely the opposite of something Sam would do, he hates anything like that because of the way people behave there."

"Exactly," Castiel said, nodding to her. "The emotions at such a meeting would be very much to the _garuya'_ s taste. Unfortunately, it won't take long for that experience to be insufficient for it. It will force Sam to seek out much grosser experiences, if we don't stop it."

"So how do we track it down?" Herald Maria asked. "It didn't go back to any of Sam's known haunts last night."

"No, but it's possible it stayed nearby. Jessica mentioned the agitation of the dog at a neighbouring house. While the _garuya_ possesses him, Sam won't sleep or take much in the way of sustenance, so it's possible he simply found a concealed spot and waited for daylight. During the hours of day, he can to a certain extent conceal himself in the crowd. But it's likely the _garuya_ will now seek out people and places familiar to Sam and attack them more aggressively." Castiel hesitated for a moment, then added, "I'm concerned by the attack on the building where Lisa Braeden lived. That suggests its true target that time was Dean, as he is the only possible connection to her."

"You think it's gonna go after me first?" Dean asked him.

"Perhaps, if it perceives you as a threat."

" _Is_ Captain Winchester a threat to it?" Kolsen asked.

Castiel considered this. "Yes, I think so. The Maenad at the Order of Thane certainly identified him as someone capable of being a threat to it, and she knew more about Azazel than I do. Besides, he knows Sam Winchester better than anyone in this city, and Azazel must know by now that Dean will do anything in his power to protect his brothers. If, as Roe Damia suggested, the gods will support Dean in this, then the demon faces a very real threat to its existence on this plane."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! Nobody start running away with the idea that there are gods backing me up!" Dean exclaimed, alarmed by the direction this conversation was taking.

"Only the one," Castiel said mildly, "the Lord of the Deep Woods."

"Yeah, no – I didn't see him helping out Roe Damia when this poxy demon went after _her_."

"She's alive, Dean, which, for a woman of her age and infirmities, is staggering. And do you think the _garuya_ targeted her for no reason? It knew she had given me vital assistance, and you also. Instead of denying the god, you might want to start thinking how best to ingratiate yourself to him. You – and everyone else in this room – will need all the help we can get."

There was an uneasy pause in which Dean sought in vain to find an argument against this.

"There's Lady Kali too, of course," Castiel added, as though it was an afterthought.

Dean wasn't fooled by this, and he expressed his opinion pungently in words that, fortunately for their audience, were Jkathan in origin. Castiel gave him an amused look.

"I was too busy with _your_ grandmother," he replied in Valdemaran, and Dean huffed, torn between indignation and laughter. "But I think the gods can manage matters without your intentional assistance, Dean, so let us focus on what must be done by ourselves. It occurs to me that going after Sam directly may not be the best approach. Jessica, you said he went to the cockfight with others."

"Yes - a bunch of guys he wouldn't normally pass the time of day with," she confirmed, distastefully.

"It is possible they too may be possessed in some manner," Castiel said. "There is nothing in the details of Azazel to confirm this, but it's not unknown for some demons to have … sycophants, I suppose is the best way to put it. Lesser demonic beings that do the creature's bidding in return for its favours."

"This just keeps getting better," Maria remarked.

"If it helps, they will be far less intelligent than Azazel itself. Trapping and banishing them should be relatively simple, and in doing so we may draw Sam to us."

Kolsen pushed a sheet of paper and a charcoal stick towards Jessica. "Please make a list of the students you saw Sam Winchester with," he requested. Then he looked at Castiel. "Let's set about planning the traps we'll need. I assume they should be capable of holding the demons fast until you can get there, as you can't be in four or five places at once, and training more of us in the banishment ritual seems impractical in the time we have."

"Indeed. As I said before, the greatest risks lie in incorrectly laying out the traps, damaging them in some way, or allowing oneself to be swayed by the _garuya's_ words." Castiel shrugged. "Provided we are all careful, we should prevail."

"Yeah, this can't go wrong at all," Sitwell grumbled, a sentiment that Dean could only agree with.

 

xXx

 

" _Provided we are all careful, we should prevail,"_ Dean muttered. "You know, I've done some pretty stupid shit since we all came to Haven, but I've been thinking real hard about it and _none_ of it comes close to how fucking stupid this is."

He was dressed in one of Sam's Blue uniform tunics and carrying one of his sackcloth book-bags over his shoulder, stuffed with what felt like a hundredweight of crushed salt. The idea was that he would look just like another student, which Dean thought was ridiculous given his age, but Kolsen assured him that there was indeed a handful of older students among the Blues, odd as it might seem, and he was unlikely to get a second glance.

Adam was walking with him, similarly burdened, and they were making their way through the dormitory building on the Collegium campus. It was eerily quiet there, the occupants at classes at this time of the morning.

"It's not stupid," he said. "It's a good plan."

"It's a stupid plan, and if we get caught _I_ could lose my job and _you'll_ probably get kicked out of the Collegium for real this time."

"The Heralds are in on this! They won't let anything happen to us."

Dean itched to ask him where this faith in Heralds had come from. Nothing in their upbringing in the lower city could have inspired it, that was for sure.

"Whatever; where's this Gunter guy's room? I want to do this and make ourselves scarce."

"Jess said it was on level two, room twelve," Adam said, checking Jessica's notes. "Down that way … We already got real lucky, Dean."

Which was true. Castiel had gone to the private lodgings of one of the youths on the list and actually found him and one of the others there. Apprehending them both had been a little more exciting, by all accounts, but he'd taken Herald Maria with him and between the two of them, they'd managed to subdue them both long enough for Castiel to exorcise the demons from them. This small success had made everyone feel a lot better, not least, as Kolsen had commented, because it confirmed that they weren't chasing phantoms after all, but were clearly dealing with genuine demons.

Dean could have lived without that part being pointed out. Only in the privacy of his own mind could he admit that he'd been desperately hoping this was not the case, even though it felt like a rational response.

"Here - room twelve," Adam said softly.

"Great. Okay, take my bag a second." Dean passed it off to him, glanced up and down the passage, and quietly knocked on the door.

There was no reply, so he knocked a second time, leaning into the door and listening for any sound on the other side that might indicate an occupant. All was quiet, so he fished a set of lock-picks out of his belt pouch and set about unlocking the door.

"Should you even know how to pick a lock?" Adam asked softly, keeping a lookout and trying to shield Dean from view in case anyone happened upon them unexpectedly.

"They teach us, smartass. It's a useful skill."

"Said every snatch-purse and roofwalker _ever_."

Dean rolled his eyes, and felt the tumblers in the lock fall just so. When he lifted the latch, the door swung open silently … to reveal a similar state of disorder as the one they'd found in Sam's room the night before. Grimacing, he grabbed Adam's arm and pulled him inside, shutting the door very quietly behind them.

"Dump the bags beside the door and give me a hand here. We're going to have to clean some of this shit up before we can set the trap."

Fortunately the room was small and Gunter - the student who lodged there - clearly didn't have much more in the way of material possessions than the Winchester boys. It was a matter of moments to clear away the detritus on the floor. They rolled up the small, threadbare rug at the side of the bed and put it carefully aside, and Dean took a small hand-besom out of Adam's bag to clean away any lingering dust on the floorboards.

Then Adam took out a piece of chalk and, using a paper diagram given to him by Castiel, began to draw the trap on the floorboards. It took him nearly ten, tense minutes to complete, and the two of them took another five to squint at the diagram and the trap on the floor, doing their best to make sure the two matched exactly and nothing had been left out.

"Looks good," Dean said finally. "Come on, let's get it marked out in salt - " He stopped abruptly, his head coming up.

There were footsteps outside in the passage.

In seconds, he had Adam hidden on the side of the door that would shield him when it opened, and he flattened himself against the wall on the other side. The steps slowed and came to a halt on the other side of the door.

Dean slipped his hand into the opening in the side of his trousers and silently drew out his Bully.

The latch lifted and the door swung open, a tall, lanky youth striding inside. There was something about the way he moved that wasn't quite right to Dean's eyes, but he didn't stop to debate it with himself. It was remarkably easy to step out behind the boy and rap him lightly on the back of his skull with the iron-shod head of his Bully.

He dropped to the floor, probably without even knowing what had happened.

"Kinda anticlimactic," Dean commented, bending over him warily.

Adam was disgusted. "Do you mean I just spent a quarter candlemark drawing that trap for nothing?"

Dean grinned. "Let's just hope it's him." He rolled the boy over on the floor, checking his pulse just in case. It seemed steady enough. "This look like the guy to you?"

Adam shrugged, bending over and craning his neck to look. "He looks familiar, but Jess'll have to take a look to be sure."

"In that case, help me move him. We need to finish the trap just in case."

Adam sighed heavily, but grabbed one of the boy's arms. "I don't know which would piss me off more at this point."

"Welcome to the life of a Watch officer, son."

 

xXx

 

"That's Gunter," Jessica confirmed.

"Nice to know I didn't assault and abduct someone innocent," Dean said. He was more relieved than he let on; totally aside from knocking Gunter out, there had been the stress of making sure the - now unnecessary - trap was drawn properly in salt, the utterly _indescribable_ experience of getting over a hundred pounds of insensate teenager out of the dormitory building without being seen, and the relocking of Gunter's door with lockpicks (significantly more difficult than unlocking it with them), followed by hauling said insensate teenager across to the Heralds' Collegium.

Honestly, he wasn't entirely sure how they'd managed it. Maybe there was a god on their side after all. But at least now they had three of Sam's new cronies under lock and key, and as soon as Gunter woke up Castiel was going to exorcise his demonic passenger. He wanted Dean, Adam and as many of the others as possible to be present when that happened, because, he said, it was important that they be able to recognise the signs of possession for future reference.

Dean was just a _little_ unhappy at what this implied.

He wasn't the only one. "I don't know about anyone else, but I was real happy when I didn't know demonic possession was a thing we all had to worry about," Herald Sitwell grumbled.

"Being taken by surprise by it would certainly be preferable," Herald Kolsen said amiably, making Adam snigger.

"Yeah, hilarious," Dean told his brother, rolling his eyes. "Come on, we got two more rooms to bait before we can have fun with demon banishing. Grab the salt."

Jessica wanted to check in with Tula Redaxe, so the three of them walked back across the Collegium campus together. The last of Sam's companions (that they knew of, at any rate) had a room in the same boarding house, a detail that made both of the Winchesters a little tense. It made Tula tense too, but she assured them that she hadn't seen a hair on Sam's head so far, and gave them the key to get into the fourth boy's room without a murmur. Dean and Adam left Jessica with her and climbed the stairs.

"Where the hell is Sam?" Adam wanted to know, as they cleared the floor in yet another trashed room, swept it clean, and began to mark the outline of the trap on the floor.

"Hopefully he's just lying low," Dean replied. If he wasn't … but that was why Castiel, Maria and a couple of other Heralds were in the lower city, setting up protections around people like Ellen and the Ropewalk Watch House.

He tried not to let his imagination run away with him, but the memory of the temple fire and the aftermath of the other arson attacks made it hard not to wonder if Castiel was really up to dealing with the problem. If any of them were up to it, for that matter, and what would happen if they weren't.

"I think we've got this one," Adam said at length, studying the pattern in salt on the floor. The salt was slightly damp, which made dragging it around a chore, but damp salt was less likely to get smudged.

Dean checked the diagram, and nodded. "Looks good." He hesitated for a moment, wiping his palms unconsciously on the seat of his trousers. "Right. We'd better - " He stopped. The sound of voices from somewhere below was muffled but distinct enough for him to make out Jessica's voice, raised and frightened.

The second voice brought the hair up on the back of his neck.

All the colour drained out of Adam's face. "That's - "

"I know." For a moment, his mind went blank; then years of experience with the Watch kicked in, and Dean knew what he had to do. "You need to get out of here, _now_ , and go get Castiel," he said softly.

"The stairs go right past his door," Adam said, and he was so composed despite his obvious alarm that Dean felt a surge of pride and affection for his little brother. He reached out and squeezed his shoulder.

"I seem to remember you're pretty nimble with windows. Think you can make it out of this one and down to the ground?"

Adam gave him a shaky grin, then took a quick look out of it. "Better if I scoot across a little once I'm out, so I don't go past his window on the way down … piece of cake."

"You break your neck and I'll ground you for a month," Dean promised him, which was the manliest way he could think of saying "be careful". And he helped Adam through the narrow casement.

 

xXx

 

Sam's door was open and the voices drifting out of it were quite audible.

There was no sign of Tula. She could hardly have failed to overhear this, and Dean's gut clenched, wondering what had happened to her. There was no opportunity to check, and he had to force himself to put her fate aside.

"I don't understand," Jessica was saying, her voice shaking. "This isn't like you, Sam."

"Maybe you don't know me as well as you think you do."

Dean's skin began to crawl, because that was Sam's voice and it wasn't. There was an ugly note in it, a hateful kind of cruel amusement, that stirred an unpleasant memory of their father in the back of his mind.

For the first time, Dean wondered if the demon had managed to successfully possess Jon after all. That was … both enlightening and horrifying all at once.

"Sam, please don't …"

"I'd tell you to man up and grow a pair," Sam said, "but that would make you even more useless and less interesting to me, so why don't you get lost? I'll come find you when I actually need you for something."

Dean heard Jessica sob, and he stepped into the doorway. Sam swung around to face him and for a split second Dean thought he saw something in his face - something dark and ugly bubbling beneath the surface, something familiar. Then it was gone, leaving nothing but a hint of yellow in his eyes.

Sam smirked, a wholly unfamiliar expression for him. "Oh! It's you."

"Yeah," Dean said, forcing calm into his voice. That brief flash had been enough for him to recognise the _garuya_. "I guess we've met before, huh?"

Sam made a sad face, but the corners of his mouth were twitching. "You're dumber than everyone thinks you are, but I guess even you had to work it out eventually. Or did that priest friend of yours spell it out to you in … tiny … little … words?"

_It's not Sam._ It still stung, but Dean could play this game. He forced a smile onto his face. "Better than that. He showed me some pictures." He looked across at Jessica, who was standing near the window. "You all right, Jess?"

Her face was streaked with tears, and she was holding her left wrist to her breast, gingerly, as though it had been wrenched or sprained, but she nodded shakily.

"Good. What about Tula?"

"Don't worry, Tula won't be interrupting us," Sam told him.

"That right?" Dean said quietly. "Well, you might just be sorry you did that. Then again, I reckon you're gonna be sorry you did a lot of things before this day's over." He took a step forward and held out his hand to Jessica. "Come on, Jess, you're getting out of here."

"I hope you're not relying on the little priest to rescue you," Sam said, smiling at Dean in a disturbing parody of his normal expression. "Even if he wasn't at the other end of the city, you don't really think he's any kind of match for me, do you?"

"Guess we'll find out." Dean took Jessica's good hand and pushed her gently behind him and out of the door. "Get to the Collegium and tell them what's happened," he told her.

Her eyes widened in horror. "Dean, you're not going to stay here with him?"

Sam chuckled. "Of course he is! He's actually stupid enough to think he can stop me, all by his little self!"

Dean gave Jessica a reassuring smile. "It'll be fine, I promise." And when she was gone, stumbling down the stairs, he turned back to the thing wearing Sam's face, the smile broadening into a smirk of his own. "Gotta say, I'm feeling pretty good about my chances here."

Sam's smirk vanished, turning ugly. "Really?"

Dean grinned at him slyly. "Yeah - _Azazel_. Really."

The creature snarled, lunging at him - and slammed to a halt, several feet short of his goal. A spider's web of light flared beneath his feet, surrounding him and caging him in.

"What is this!" it shrieked, enraged.

"It's a demon trap," Dean told him helpfully. "Technical term. Me and Adam, we did this room first before we went upstairs to see about your buddy." He raised his eyebrows, his smile turning grim. "In the words of many a Watch officer before me - you're going nowhere, son."

"You think this can stop me doing what I want?" Sam's familiar features began to disappear under the ugly visage of the _garuya_ as it came more and more to the fore. Castiel had been right - knowing what it looked like made it impossible to prevent Dean seeing its real self just under the surface. "You think you can keep me here long enough, do you think that it will stop my creatures doing my bidding?"

Dean grimaced. "Hate to break it to you, pal, but we already bagged three of 'em, and when the next one comes back we'll get him in the trap too."

It bared its teeth and its eyes flared, now fully yellow and barred like the eyes of a goat. "And what makes you think those are my only tools?"

"Well, granted I'm the dumb one in the family," Dean said, with a shrug, "but how many of them can there be, really? And how effective are they gonna be without you there to tell 'em what to do?"

"When I get out of here," it said, soft-voice and savage, "I'm going after every single thing you care about, Dean Winchester. I'm going to finish that bitch downstairs by strangling her with her own intestines. I'm going to shaft your brother's little whore with a _pike_. I'll burn out the eyes of each and every one of your friends, I'll burn your precious Watch House to the ground with every one of your constables inside it, while they scream for mercy, and when I find your little brother I’ll gut him like a pig and hang his carcass from the tallest tower in the city!"

" _When_ you get out of here," Dean said, but he had to force back a mouthful of bile first.

"Or perhaps you'd like to find out what happens when I decide I've no further use for this pitiful vessel," it said, making a sweeping gesture down the length of Sam's body.

"Whatever." Cold sweat began to trickle down Dean's back under the borrowed uniform shirt. "Still not going anywhere."

"I might as well have some fun while we wait, then." It grinned at him like a skull. "Sam was never my first choice, you know."

"That right?" Dean stared at it, repulsed. "What happened to you using my old man? Too tough for you to control - or too drugged up?"

"He was weak," it said, full of smirking contempt. "Weak and limited. No, _you_ were my first choice, Dean. You had real promise, once upon a time, before your mother ruined you."

It was on the tip of Dean's tongue to ask how she'd done that - but he saw the precipice just in time and stepped back.

_Its first weapon will be its voice,_ the memory of Castiel's gravelly voice said in his mind.

"That why you killed her?" Dean asked the _garuya_ instead, around a dry throat.

"No, I killed her and your step-mother because they looked so pretty with their skin peeling off and their bellies bursting from the heat," it said, smiling. "I thought you'd be pleased when I got rid of Kate for you, but you were always an ungrateful little shit."

"Yeah, I'm funny that way."

"You ought to be grateful to me for disposing of Sam too," it told him. "The money he's cost you … the trouble … Really, Dean, is he worth it? Do you think he'll thank you for it? Will either of them?" It stretched Sam's lips in a grotesque grin. "I've seen inside his mind and his heart. The day he scrapes together enough coin is the day you'll be smothered by the dust-cloud he leaves behind him - if he even bothers to tell you he's going."

"Yeah, that's a nice little fantasy," Dean gritted out, "but all I see is you and him stuck inside that trap and goin' nowhere fast."

"True, I'll be able to make a quicker getaway without him," the _garuya_ said, shrugging. "So maybe I should just …"

The tips of Sam's fingers blackened and began to smoke.

"No …" Dean whispered, transfixed.

"Pull up a chair," it invited him. "I can make this last a while. You'll enjoy the show, Dean, I promise you - personally I like it best when the face begins to melt, but you can tell me what you think."

Dean looked around frantically and his eyes fell on a pottery ewer of water next to a wash basin on a stand. He grabbed it and was just about to throw it over the creature, when he saw its eager, gloating expression, and stopped just in time.

If he threw water over the demon, it would wash away the salt on the floor and break the trap.

Slowly, he put the ewer back down.

"You don't get out that easy," he told it shakily.

The yellow eyes flared with rage and hatred. "Then you can watch your baby brother burn, asshole! Is that what you want?"

The breath stuttered in Dean's chest for a moment. "You hurt him," he said, "and I'll make sure Cas hurts _you_. You understand? You're goin' back where you came from, either way, but you can go easy or you can go in a whole world of pain."

"Sounds like a barrel of fun to me," it retorted, "and in the meantime I get to watch _you_ hurt. Sweet deal."

Dean could only watch helplessly as Sam's clothes seemed to ripple and catch fire, flames running up his arms and neck, until the smell of singeing hair and smoke poured over the edges of the trap to fill the room. The reek made Dean feel like a child again, powerless to prevent his loved ones dying.

_Use the sigil!_

For a second Dean thought he saw Lady Kali's face in the halo of flames around Sam's head, wreathed in the smoke of incense as he'd seen her last.

_Hold the sigil in your mind. And pray for water._

The rune she'd drawn in the air flashed into his thoughts, and with it a plan.

It was insane. It was going to get him killed, and very possibly everyone around him too if it went wrong, which was all too likely. But it was his only chance to save Sam.

"All right! Stop it! I'll let you out. Just let Sam live!"

The flames vanished as though they had never happened. The demon stared at him hungrily.

"Good. Break the trap."

"Not so fast." Dean faced it down. "You want out, I'll let you out. But you ain't getting out of here alone."

"What treachery is this?" it snarled.

Dean held firm. "No treachery. You said you would have preferred me? Then you got me. You leave Sam there and you take me instead."

For several moments it stared at him, visibly turning the offer over, looking for catches. But finally it nodded, albeit suspiciously.

"Fine. Give me your hand and let me in."

_Its ambitions are short-sighted_ , Castiel had said. Dean hoped that was true. Keeping the sigil at the front of his mind and sending up a short prayer to whatever gods were listening, he reached out and let the _garuya_ snatch at his hand.

_Why don't you come on in?_ he thought hollowly - and just like that, it did.

Dean had a split second to feel the Keirnys pendant inside his collar flare with unexpected heat, then the demon's searing presence collided with the sigil of containment, and it found itself trapped more indelibly than either of them had anticipated.

It shrieked like something from the bowels of the lowest hells, a mental scream of pure rage and hatred that sent Dean reeling back against the old wooden chest of drawers against the wall. For a moment his knees nearly gave out, but somehow he held onto himself in spite of the _thing_ battering against the walls of his mind.

_Rain_ , he thought fuzzily, fighting the _garuya_ for control of his body. _Rain._

"Dean, no!"

That was Sam's voice, helpless and anguished, and it was enough to make Dean drag his eyes open.

"You - you stay in that circle, Sammy," he croaked. "Don't you leave it!"

_Water. Sigil. Water …_

The window was a matter of feet away, and it was standing open by a couple of inches. He could see sudden raindrops splattering across the cheap, blistered glass where none had been before, and hear a rushing, gurgling sound from outside.

Water … Sam's room overlooked a deep, open storm drain that was overflowing with floodwater. He could hear it pounding against the stones that edged the drain as it rushed past, through the city and down to the hopelessly swollen river.

Dean staggered to the window, the demon fighting him every inch of the way. He got the window open by dint of ramming his elbow into it and clung to the cill desperately, trying to force himself to swing a leg over it.

"Dean!" Sam shouted again, frantic. "Don't do this!"

_I'm coming! Hold on Dean!_

"Got no choice," Dean gritted out, not sure who he was telling, trying to peel his fingers off the cill. One hand made it to the edge of the casement and he dragged himself into it somehow. Allowed himself a pause to catch his breath.

Risked a last glance back at his brother, whom he would do anything to protect.

He managed a shaky smile for him. "Love you, Sammy," he whispered.

And with one last, overwhelming effort he managed to tip himself out of the window.

He hit the freezing, filthy water with a painful smack and was at once dragged under the surface, sweeping relentlessly down and into the dark of the culvert beyond.

 

xXx

 

There was no point in trying to swim, even had Dean been able to in the circumstances. The water in the drains was moving too fast, and it was laden with all manner of rubbish that battered at him relentlessly.

Inside him, the demon battered at him too, ripping and screaming without let-up, but trapped and incandescent with rage. Dean struggled to hold the sigil of containment at the front of his mind, to keep his eyes shut and his limbs close to his body, to survive the multiple assaults of the demon, the water, the branches and rocks and other painfully sharp, heavy objects swirling around him.

He was going to drown, and he had no idea what would happen if he died here in the water while the demon was still inside him. The only thing he could do was try to -

Hold on!

At some point he was swept into what was surely a sewer - it was suddenly pitch black all around and the water was much fouler - but barely had he had time to assimilate this, then he was swept out again -

\- he was tumbling through the air -

\- and with another painful _smack!_ he hit the water again and was dragged beneath the surface for several moments, panicking, fighting for breath, fighting the demon, fighting to keep the sigil in his mind. Then something struck the back of his head, making him see stars and even briefly silencing the demon.

_Hold on!_

Stunned by the blow, Dean lost his grip on everything around him. He was distantly aware of being dragged beneath the surface once more, and freezing water pouring into lungs, but there was nothing he could do about it.

He let go and surrendered himself to the river.

Something slammed into him, seized him around the chest and shoulders, and dragged him back up again. He felt cold air on his face, and something solid and warm supporting him.

There was a blinding pain on his left shoulder, and a rough voice chanting incomprehensible words in his ear -

Azazel howled and tore at him, a blinding crescendo of fury.

Dean blacked out.

 

xXx

 

Boat-hooks … nets … a lot of shouting by what seemed like a huge crowd, but which was probably no more than a dozen people, at least two of whom were Heralds. Dean's unmoving body was hoisted out of the water and onto the wooden boards of the ancient bridge.

Moments later, Castiel was pulled out too, coughing and shivering. He was pounded on the back by a grim-faced Herald Kolsen until he spat out a lungful of filthy river water, and a rough, heavy blanket was draped around his shoulders.

"All right?" Kolsen asked him, and Castiel nodded, unable to speak. Dean was surrounded by too many people for him to see clearly what was going on, but it sounded like they were trying to get the water out of him too. Kolsen left him to go and assist them.

A clatter of hooves on the bridge announced Eslan's arrival. The Companion was furious.

_You are an idiot! Jumping into the water - exorcising that thrice-damned creature IN the water - you could have drowned or worse!_

"You agreed with me at the time," Castiel said hoarsely, a little amused.

_As though you gave me any choice! And that doesn't make you any less of an idiot! Although not as big an idiot as the fool you went in after. What was HE thinking?! You warned him not to listen to anything the damned demon said!_

"Hush! He was trying to save his brother. And he'll be lucky if he comes out of this alive."

Eslan's mind was suddenly blank and silent.

"Eslan? What's going on?"

_Chosen …_

"No."

Castiel staggered to his feet somehow, shedding the blanket as he pushed his way through the gaggle of river workers who had answered the Heralds' call for assistance. Kolsen and Herald Sitwell were bent over Dean, trying grimly to revive him without noticeable success, and even as Castiel stumbled to Dean's side, Sitwell shook his head and sat back.

"We need that damned Healer!" Kolsen snapped at him. He was performing compressions on Dean's sternum and didn't miss a stroke even as his eyes met Sitwell's fiercely.

"Phil … it's no good, he was dead before we ever got him out of the water."

There was a mutter of dismay from the watchers, which Castiel was grateful to see only made Kolsen angrier.

"I am not losing this man on my watch, dammit! Go find that Healer or - "

A woman wearing vivid green robes shoved her way through the crowd, and dropped to her knees beside Dean. "Breathing?" she demanded tersely.

"No," Kolsen said.

"Get back."

Kolsen pulled away, and the Healer slammed one slender hand against Dean's sternum. There was little visible force to the move, but Dean's body seemed to arch up for a moment - then he was flat on the ground again, but choking.

"Get him on his side!"

Sitwell was quicker than Kolsen; between them, he and the Healer had rolled Dean on his side in a trice. The Healer thrust her hand between his shoulderblades, and suddenly he was vomiting up river water and coughing weakly.

She let out a breath. "Good. That doesn't always work, but he'll do now. Let's see what other injuries he has …"

"He has a head wound," Castiel said, and abruptly he sat down again. The overwhelming relief he felt seemed to have dragged all the strength out of his legs.

The Healer gave him a look that sized him up comprehensively. "You pull him out?"

"No, but I went in after him."

"Then you're an idiot."

_I already told you that._ But Eslan was nosing his wet hair gently. _He'll do now. It's over._

"Thank all the gods!" Castiel said, and it was a genuine prayer.

_No disrespect to the gods,_ Eslan said dryly, _but I think more thanks is due to all these people who rescued the pair of you!_


	8. Chapter 8

Dean was initially woken by what honestly sounded like a carnival going on - dozens of voices all gabbling dozens of different conversations in dozens of languages, laughing, shouting, cursing, singing, reciting poetry, instructing, quarrelling and debating …

His head felt like someone had rolled a cart over it. A very large, heavy cart with iron-rimmed wheels, probably pulled by an oxen team.

The last thing his head needed was all this damned noise.

 _Will you all shut the fuck up?_ he thought grumpily, refusing to open his eyes.

He supposed the fact that they suddenly _did_ shut up was surprising, but the peace and quiet was too much of a relief for him to care.

Footsteps approached and a cool, gentle hand settled on his brow for a moment.

"My apologies, Captain Winchester," a woman's voice said. "It won't happen again."

"Thanks," he mumbled, and he surrendered himself to sleep again.

 

xXx

 

When Dean awoke for the second time, he woke completely. His headache was gone, but there was a residual ache in his chest and his left arm was sore. He still had the vague feeling that he'd tangled with a cart and come off the worst, and his head felt a bit odd inside, as though he was staring out from the inside of a glass storage jar.

Still. He'd felt worse.

When he blinked his eyes open and looked around, he was lying on a bed inside a small room with tiled walls and floor. Light was pouring down onto the blankets covering him from a small window high up on the wall. By the quality of the light, he judged it to be midday or later, but really that was a guess.

Pulling himself up into a sitting position took more effort than he liked, and the aches in his muscles reminded him unpleasantly of a fever he'd caught a couple of years previously that had laid him up in his bed for a tenday.

His clothes were gone and under the blankets he discovered he was wearing an unfamiliar pair of linen drawers. Apart from that, and a bandage around his upper left arm, he was naked. That was a little worrying, especially as there was a small chair and table next to his bed, but nothing upon them but an unlit pottery lamp and a cup of water.

Dean had absolutely no idea where he was, and this would have been more worrying if the door to the room hadn't been standing open by a few inches, allowing in a distant bustle of noise. At least he wasn't locked in.

Then someone tapped politely on the door and stepped inside - a middle-aged man in Herald Whites, but not one Dean had seen before. He was tall, with collar-length dark hair that was liberally sprinkled with grey, and a similarly greying neat beard. He smiled when he saw that Dean was awake.

"The Healers said that you should be waking up any time now!" he said, approaching the side of Dean's bed. "How are you feeling, Captain Winchester?"

"Like I got hit by a logging wagon," Dean said reflexively, "and for the record, that happened once so I know what I'm talking about."

The Herald chuckled. "Well, it wasn't _quite_ that - but we'll discuss that in a moment. We haven't met before; I'm Herald Raylor, the Dean of the Heralds' Collegium."

He held out his hand, but Dean had now had time to process his uniform and take in the fact that his tunic not only had coloured piping on it but also a border of stiff silver braid.

"Shouldn't that be _Prince_ Raylor?" he said bluntly. Then he wanted to kick himself for saying it like that. It wasn't like he had a particular objection to being an ass when the situation called for it, but he was fairly sure that this situation _didn't._ It was just that it wasn't every day that someone like him got to meet the Heir to the throne.

But Herald Raylor only smiled. "Not a title I can actually lay claim to," he said casually, and he grabbed the chair and turned it around so that he could face Dean when he sat on it. "Yes, I am the Heir - at least for the moment - but that's really a formality. The Queen is still quite young, and unmarried. It's safer for me to be the official Heir until she produces one of her own - a safety net, if you will. But I'm not a prince and never was. Bastardy tends to preclude it."

"Uh … right." He might not have been hit by an actual wagon, but Dean was now fairly sure that he had a head injury and this was some kind of hallucination. "So, where am I?"

"The House of Healing, at the Healers' Collegium." Raylor tipped his head to one side for a moment. "How much do you remember, Captain?"

Dean thought about that for a moment. And tensed. "The demon. And I … did I really end up in the sewers?" That didn't make sense.

"Well, according to your brother, you threw yourself out of his window into the culvert below, so I imagine you went through part of the sewers at least, before you ended up in the river."

"The river." Dean had to fight to keep his voice level. "Guess that answers the question of whether I can still swim or not."

"You weren't swimming when Castiel went in after you." Raylor's tone was suspiciously level too. "You took a blow to the back of the head, either when you were in the drains or from debris in the water. He told me that he thought it was only because the _demon_ was determined to survive that you didn't simply drown before he caught you."

Dean stared at him. "Cas went into the water after me? Is he _nuts?_ "

"He's a trainee Herald. Some would say there's no difference," Raylor replied dryly.

"Yeah, and I'm one of 'em. Did he get rid of the demon?"

"I think the fact that we're having this conversation answers that – "

"What about Sammy? And Adam?"

"Your brothers are fine, although somewhat shaken up by what happened. And before you ask," Raylor added, as Dean opened his mouth to ask another question, "Jessica Moore is unharmed, as is your brother's landlady – well, no, that's not quite right. Mistress Moore has a sprained wrist, and Tula Redaxe has a knot on her head to match the one on your own, but they're both alive and in reasonable spirits under the circumstances. The other young men who were possessed are also recovering, and as far as we can tell, no one else was harmed during this … adventure. So the matter seems to have passed off satisfactorily."

"Great." And it was. But Dean preferred to check on all of that himself. "When do I get out of here, and what's it gonna cost me?"

Herald Raylor regarded him curiously for a moment or two. "There is no cost to you," he said finally. "The Crown will pay for your treatment."

It would? Fine. Dean wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Even if it had bright blue eyes.

"Then there's just the little matter of my clothes – as in, I don't seem to have any," he pointed out.

Raylor smiled faintly. "Yes, the Healers are holding them for the moment, because Castiel warned us that you would probably try to escape if we didn't."

Dean's stomach lurched. "Escape, huh? Look … if I'm being charged with something, just tell me. I promise I'm not gonna book it, that's not my style."

"No, you misunderstand me." Raylor sighed. "Forgive me, that was badly put. No one is apportioning blame for this incident, Captain, and even if we were, it wouldn't land on you. You've manifestly done everything you could to resolve the problem. This is something different – you and I need to have a conversation, and I'm afraid I can't let you return to the Strangers Quarter until the issue is resolved."

This was not particularly reassuring. "A conversation about what?"

"About the fact that you are a powerful Mindspeaker and need to learn how to shield yourself properly," Raylor told him.

Dean flopped back against his pillow. "Yeah, right. I'm a Mindspeaker. Now I _know_ they're giving me some good drugs."

Raylor snorted rather inelegantly. "No drugs, Captain." He got up and leaned over Dean. "Perhaps a demonstration is in order …"

He touched a spot between Dean's eyes.

And the room was abruptly filled with noise – mostly voices, male and female, all shrieking at him in a cacophony of tones and languages. Dean flailed at the onslaught, physically and mentally, until Raylor touched him again and it all faded away.

It took an embarrassing couple of minutes before he could get his breathing – and shaking – under control. By that time Raylor was seated again, regarding him with sympathetic eyes.

"The Healers put you under a temporary block yesterday morning," he explained, when Dean failed to find the words to ask even the most basic question about what had just happened. "Apparently you woke up briefly and rather brusquely ordered the entire Healing complex to shut up. Our fault, not yours, I hasten to add – my colleague Kolsen knew about your Gift, as did Castiel, but in the excitement they forgot to warn your Healers that you might wake up unshielded."

He paused, but Dean was still regarding him in dumb shock, so he continued. "Castiel told us that he discovered you were a Mindspeaker early in your acquaintance, but it seemed to be a fairly minor ability and you demonstrated enough shielding to cope adequately with it, so he said nothing. Also, at that point he hadn't been Chosen and didn't realise that it's somewhat unusual for an ordinary member of the population in Valdemar to be Gifted. Clearly, it's no longer the case that the Gift is a minor one – Kolsen was forced to put a block on you two days ago, as your shields collapsed under stress and you … well." Here Raylor smiled wryly. "Let's pass on what happened when you shared breakfast with my colleagues. But what seems clear to me now is that you have a powerful Gift, you have no training to cope with it, and your shields are inadequate for the purpose. You can't go back to the Strangers Quarter like that, Captain. I don't know a lot about the communities there, but I _do_ know that some of them still believe hearing voices is witchcraft."

He paused again, but Dean was still staring at him. "Do you have any questions?"

"Let's pretend everything you just said was in Karsite – which I don't speak," Dean said finally. "Can you repeat all that in Valdemaran, and preferably in smaller words?"

If Raylor sighed, it was purely inwardly. "You're going to be staying with us for a few days," he said. "We've informed your District Command that we need you here to help us close the case on the arson attacks in the city, and your two lieutenants will mind the Ropewalk Watch while you're gone."

"Oh. Right."

Dean really hoped this _was_ just the head injury talking, but something told him he wasn't going to get that lucky.

 

xXx

 

In the event, Dean stayed at the Collegium for five days. Some of it even involved clearing up the last of the mess caused by the demon's possession of Sam. The rest of it, however, was a somewhat frustrating, if enlightening, series of sessions with Raylor and several other Heralds, trying to get a grip on his Gift.

He was a Mindspeaker. For the first two days, Dean was convinced that someone was going to jump out at him, yelling "Surprise! Just kidding!", but a couple of sessions with Herald Ansel cured him of that particular delusion. Unfortunately, the sessions with Ansel had been unavoidable, as none of the usual Mindspeech teachers could make any headway with Dean while he resolutely clung to the idea that there was no way in nine hells that _he_ was Gifted. And dealing with Ansel for any length of time was _excruciating_. Dean liked the guy - everyone seemed to like the guy - but the last time anyone had dug that deeply into his psyche had been when he'd reluctantly given the story of his life to Castiel. Dean had been certain at the time that he would never bare his soul like that to anyone, ever again.

 _Wrong._ Half an hour in Herald Ansel's company had him pouring it all out again, and it was only when he was on the other side of the man's office door that he stopped to wonder what the fuck had unhinged his mouth. It was horribly painful. It was also embarrassingly cathartic. And somewhere along the way, Ansel gently persuaded him to accept that, yes, he was a Mindspeaker, he'd always been a Mindspeaker, he'd just managed to sort of mostly tuck it away somewhere after his mother died, along with a whole lot of other toxic shit about his past.

Dean supposed it was something that he wasn't suffering alone. Sam was also undergoing sessions with Ansel, although he was reluctant to tell Dean why and Ansel refused to discuss it with Dean. So it was left to Herald Kolsen to enlighten him, the next time Dean ran into him in the Companions' stables -

Oh yeah. And there was the whole thing with the Companions.

Dean wasn't stupid; but then, none of the Heralds working with him seemed to be particularly subtle. And when he wasn't working on controlling the Mindspeech, what Ansel and Raylor liked Dean to do was spend time with the Companions, either in their field or in their stables. Ostensibly he was just … helping out, like the Herald trainees and Collegium grooms. And honestly, he was used to being busy, and he liked the Companions anyway, so he had no objection to helping take care of them.

But he wasn't fooled. What Raylor and Ansel were really hoping was that Dean would get Chosen, which … he could see their point. It would make things neater and simpler for _them_ , because having someone with a really strong Mindspeaking Gift loose in the city had to be a bit of a headache for them. (Kind of on a par with the headache a woman claiming to be a goddess with the Gift of ForeSight was for him.)

Pity for them that the Companions didn't see it that way, then, but Dean got to spend a couple of hours each day in the company of some really great listeners - even Ansel's slightly scary pal Taver - who had no problem dealing with him if his new and occasionally flimsy mental shields got away from him.

His personal favourite was Kolsen's mare, Lola, who put up with his rambling talk while he brushed her and had a real knack for letting him know when he'd missed a spot. So it was no great surprise that he ran into Kolsen sooner rather than later.

"You want to take over?" Dean offered, refusing to jump at the Herald's silent and unexpected arrival. He held out the brush, but Kolsen only smiled.

"Not at all. You're doing a marvellous job."

"Yeah, well. I got great material to work with."

Kolsen made an amused sound. "I see none of our friends here have offered you a permanent position."

Dean scoffed at this. "Like that was ever gonna happen! I know your buddies keep hoping, but I'm way to old for that kind of fantasy."

"You're what - five-and-twenty? I was twenty-seven when Lola Chose me, so it's not _that_ unlikely."

Dean shot him a startled look. "I thought it was real rare for anyone over fifteen to get Chosen?"

"Let's rather say 'uncommon'. Still, I'll admit I didn't think it was very likely when Ansel and Raylor both broached the idea, but it's not as though you can get into much trouble with the Companions, so I kept my thoughts to myself."

"Huh." Dean kept brushing. "Notice no one's sending my kid brothers down here though."

"That's because you're very different people."

"That right?"

Kolsen considered him for a moment. "Ansel has his own code of discretion," he said eventually, "but it seems to me that you should be told. After all, your brothers know about you. Ansel is working with Sam because Sam is also Gifted - but with a very minor Gift of Empathy, rather than Mindspeech. Under normal circumstances it probably wouldn't merit attention, but the issue with the demon is a big enough concern that the decision was taken to train Sam in shielding as well, and as Empathy is Ansel's particular Gift he's the best person to handle it."

Dean turned this over in his mind. He was surprised to realise that he wasn't actually surprised. "What about Adam?" he asked.

"We tested him, and he's completely mind-blind. Given that you and Sam had a different mother, who was almost certainly Gifted herself, it's likely that Adam inherited his mind-blindness from his own mother. But that's just a guess."

Dean could draw his own conclusions. "Azazel told me I was his first choice."

"That's open to question, I should think. Granted, you have the stronger Gift, but there's good evidence that your mother was training you early to shield yourself - albeit by a very different method than we use here at the Collegium. Sam's Gift, on the other hand, is very slight and may not have manifested until he was older, and in any case Empathy is hard even for experts to recognise. Without any kind of shielding, he was vulnerable to a demon with a particular interest in your family. That's Castiel's theory, at any rate, and he's the expert."

The rhythm of Dean's brushing faltered for a moment. He hadn't seen Castiel once since the other man had gone into the river after him. Then Lola snorted at him and stamped an imperious hoof, and he hastily resumed grooming her.

"That right? So where is Cas these days?" He hadn't seen Eslan either, and Dean was fairly sure that by now he'd already met most, if not all, of the Companions stationed in Haven.

"He has business elsewhere, and won't be back for several weeks."

All right then.

Dean wasn't a teenaged girl. If it hurt that Castiel had disappeared without once trying to see him since the demon attack, it wasn't a new kind of hurt for him. He'd been absorbing that kind of blow for more than half his life; it wasn't even entirely unexpected this time. So he locked his new mental shields tight, only too aware of Kolsen's sharp eyes on him, and stoically carried on brushing Lola.

 

xXx

 

He visited Sam and Adam before he went back to the lower city.

It was strange to find that Adam was the easier of the two to talk to, for once. Dean satisfied himself that his youngest brother was unharmed by the experience he'd just been through, and was equal parts amused and horrified to discover that Adam mostly viewed the whole business as an excellent adventure in an otherwise largely humdrum life. Meanwhile, Adam satisfied himself that Dean hadn't been too damaged by the incident, then somewhat less than politely requested that Dean make himself scarce, on account of the fact that having a Watch Captain hanging around was ruining Adam's credibility with all his friends.

Dean couldn't help thinking that this unusual cordiality between them probably wouldn't last, but he enjoyed it for the time being. Especially when Adam unexpectedly said, with studied casualness, "I'll come down to Ellen's for Spring Equinox, right?"

"Sure," Dean agreed, nodding and resolutely sitting on his surprise. "Gotta come settle up for your laundry sometime, right?"

Adam snorted. "Get out of here!"

But they were both grinning when they parted.

He found Jessica having tea with Tula at Sam's lodgings, which he supposed saved him from having to track her down separately.

Tula still had a bandage around her head from where the demon had hit her, but she brushed off any concern from Dean with a nicely sarcastic "Least I didn't throw myself into the river to _drown_ , you fool". She also claimed that the bandage was only to stop her lodgers pestering her for a while longer; Dean rather doubted this, but he got the message and backed off.

Jessica's wrist was bandaged up too. "But it's not even a proper sprain, just twisted, and it's not my writing hand, so it'll be fine."

What Dean really wanted to ask her was how she was dealing with the experience of Sam being possessed by a pretty foul-mouthed demon, but he lacked the words to ask it in a sensitive way and knew it. Apparently his face said everything for him anyway.

"I'm all right," Jessica told him. "I keep telling _him_ that too, and he doesn't seem to want to hear it. But I'm fine. I knew it wasn't him, so it doesn't matter what it said to me."

The fact that she felt the need to state that out loud, without being asked, was pretty telling in Dean's book, but since he had himself been denying all week that the things the demon said mattered to him, he was on shaky ground here.

"Yeah, well," he said helplessly. "You know where I am if you need anything, right?"

Her smile was a little tight, but genuine. "Of course. Are you going to talk to Sam?"

"If he's around."

"He's hiding in his room," Tula told him. "Do us all a favour and go knock some sense into that thick skull of his. Tell him it wasn't all his fault and he can stop sulking now." Dean cocked a questioning eyebrow at her, and she huffed a little. "What? It's what he's doing!"

"He's not sulking," Jessica said, rubbing a finger across the grain of the wooden table in front of her nervously. "He's …"

"Brooding?" Dean offered, and she gave him a tired little smile.

"Yes - that."

"Looks the same as sulking to me," Tula said dryly.

"How about I just tell him to knock off both?"

Which was easier said that done, but Dean climbed the stairs to Sam's room and tapped on the door before walking in.

Sam was leaning against the window frame, staring down at the open storm drain below. In the past week, the rains had finally stopped and the flood waters had begun to recede; the water tumbling through the drain was now several inches lower and considerably slower than it had been the day Dean had tumbled down into it.

"You actually gonna say something to me today?" Dean asked eventually, when Sam seemed disinclined to even acknowledge his presence.

"What's to say?"

Dean resisted the urge to roll his eyes. "How about 'Glad you're not dead'? 'Take care on your way back home'? I'll come visit you at Spring Equinox, and make sure you and Adam don't strangle each other'?"

Sam's head jerked up; his eyes were wide and stormy. "How can you crack jokes? I nearly killed you!"

"No, you didn't," Dean said. "Festering, pox-rotted demon tried to kill me, but I'm still here, and so are you and Jess and Tula, and a whole bunch of other people." Sam's mouth tightened, and he looked away. "Oh yeah – and I got a couple messages for you. Tula says to knock off the sulking, and Jess says you're not sulking but can you stop brooding please."

"Just like that, huh," Sam muttered.

"Pretty much. I mean, they're pretending they're dealing real good with what happened, but you're not exactly helping anyone right now, are you?"

Sam's eyes flashed. "And how am I supposed to do that, Dean? That's what nobody's telling me! What do I do to make this right?"

"You get off your ass and get on with your life," Dean said flatly. "Oh, sorry – that not the answer you wanted? You want me to arrest you and ask a judge to throw your ass in a quarry for the next twenty years? If you live that long? Well sorry, but no can do, kiddo. I don't want to do it. The guys who could actually pin it on you don't want to do it. And if a bunch of Heralds don't think you're guilty, why should anyone else think it?"

"I am guilty!" Sam cried out wildly. "I let him in! I let Azazel in, Dean!"

"So did I." Dean shrugged. "Looks like we both fell for his smart mouth, and I got less excuse than you, 'cause I was warned not to listen to anything he said. But I thought he was gonna kill you, and I'm pretty sure he told you he was gonna kill – who? Me? Adam? Jess maybe? You did what you did to try and save folks, just like I did, and it ain't your fault he lied faster than kids stealing honeycakes from a fairground stand."

"You going tell me I should have told you about him?" Sam demanded.

"Don't need to. You already know that."

Sam nodded jerkily.

"I'm not gonna get on your case about it," Dean said, more gently that was his wont. "Reckon I already know why you didn't say anything." He hesitated, before asking, "How long was he talking to you before the arson started?"

Sam shuddered. "Too long."

"Months? Years?"

"Since Dad died I guess."

"Makes sense," Dean said, and he grimaced.

Sam shot him a curious look. "You're not surprised?"

"Something Azazel said to me makes me think he had his hooks into Dad. I don't know though - I might ask Castiel if I see him again."

"If?" Sam blinked at him. "I thought he was your friend. Didn't he pull you out of the river?"

"Sort of thing Heralds do." Dean gave him a crooked smile. "Pretty sure they get thrown out of the gang if they don't pull off that kind of stunt at least once."

Sam wasn't deflected by this. "So where is he?"

"No idea. Gone off on business, won't be back for weeks."

"But he's not even in Whites yet. Can they send him on missions?"

"No idea." Dean was impatient to get off the topic; he didn't want to discuss Castiel's disappearance, which was already chewing him up inside to a ridiculous degree. "The rest of us have to work for a living, though, so …"

"Yeah, I know." Sam's shoulders hunched a little. "You've got to go back."

Dean tried to keep the tone light. "Ellen'll rent out my rooms to someone else if I'm gone much longer. You'll come home for Spring Equinox, yeah? Adam says he's coming."

Sam's eyebrows shot up. "Seriously? Then I'd better come home and make sure you really _don't_ kill each other."

Dean tugged on his arm until Sam allowed him to pull him into a rough hug. "Promise me you won't let this shit get you down."

"No promises," Sam said shakily, "but I'm not going to do anything stupid."

Dean supposed he would have to be content with that.

 

xXx

 

"Don't get comfortable."

"And hello to you too, Ellen," Dean said dryly, halting in the taproom doorway. "I was just gonna get changed and - "

"Beat it up to District Command," she told him curtly. "I've had one of their runners in here every day since you disappeared to the upper city. I'm getting fed up of seeing that kid's snotty face."

Dean blinked at her. "But they know I was at the Collegium!"

"And I told him that, every damn day, but he still kept turning up again every morning." Dry as dust, and far less humorously than the words implied, she added, "I'm starting to get the idea the District Commander wants to see you real bad."

"Yeah," Dean muttered, and a hole seemed to have opened up in his gut. "I missed a meeting with him, but the Heralds said they'd fixed it with Command."

"Well, not to argue with _the Heralds_ , but you know how he feels about the white-shirts, right?"

"Yeah, I know."

Or rather, he could guess. Some senior Watch Officers were grateful for the existence of the Heralds, some were ambivalent about them. And some bitterly resented them, for a myriad of reasons. Dean usually fell into the 'ambivalent' camp. His District Commander, he was reasonably certain, would be one of the resentful ones. Washed-up ex-army types usually were.

"Right, I'm going," he said. "Don't wait up."

"Dean," Ellen said, and he looked back. "Watch your mouth, and watch your back," she told him, and he nodded.

 

xXx

 

Dean returned to the Roadhouse Inn sometime around dawn, and rather than risk Ellen possibly lying in wait for him, which he wouldn't put past her, he went over the rear wall into the courtyard at the back and slipped upstairs through the laundry.

He was both wide awake and a lot soberer than he had any business being after the quantity of liquor he'd put away in the past few hours. Some of that he put down to having vomited a lot of it into a convenient gutter - it was a long time since he'd been on a bender quite like that - and the rest probably had a lot to do with him sticking his head under a public pump at one point, and dousing himself with near freezing water.

In the silence of his rooms, Dean slumped on the window ledge and stared blankly at the shadowy outlines of his mother's votary and Keirnys tapestry on the opposite wall. Then Baby slipped out of his bedroom door and ran across the room to jump up and greet him, and Dean stirred himself to gather her close, scratching behind her ears gently.

"Missed you too, sweetheart," he whispered.

He sat there with her for a while longer, listening to her rumbling purr, until a faint clatter below announced that Tamar had begun her morning routine of opening the shutters, clearing the fireplaces, and sweeping out the taproom, ready for the new day.

Dean got stiffly to his feet and gently set Baby down on the floor, then went to his room and opened the clothes chest at the foot of the bed. There wasn't a lot in there, and what there was, was mainly the blue and tan canvas of his Watch uniforms. He pulled them all out, refolding them neatly where necessary, and set them in a pile on the end of the bed. He had only one other set of clothes, which he usually kept for festival best; he pulled these out too and set them on the lid of the chest while he strapped the uniforms into a bundle with a couple of his belts.

The uniform he was wearing was another loan from Captain Claeton, which would have to be returned to him. Dean stripped it off.

He paused for a moment then, the fingers of his left hand running over a raised mark on his upper left arm. He'd spent quite a lot of time looking at it in a mirror while he was at the Collegium; it wasn't sore anymore, but it looked like a new burn - red, livid, a little raised - and was shaped like a man's handprint. It was the one visible mark remaining of his encounter with Azazel, but he knew with a bone-deep certainty that it hadn't been made by the demon.

There was no point in dwelling on that.

So he pulled on the shirt and trousers from his festival clothes, grabbed the borrowed uniform and took it down to the laundry. Podina was just starting to draw water from the well in the courtyard and she blinked at him, still half-asleep.

"Can you do me a favour?" Dean asked her quietly.

"I - sure, of course." She set her bucket down on the lip of the well, and scrubbed her hands dry on her skirt before accepting the pile of clothes from him.

"Can you launder those for me and get someone to take them back to Captain Claeton at the Wrights-and-Smiths Watch? Don't go yourself; get one of the local kids to take them." Podina nodded nervously. "And if you've got any of my uniforms in the wash now, they’ll need to be sent back to the quartermaster when you're done with them."

Podina stared. "Back … to the quartermaster?" she faltered.

"Yeah." Dean forced himself to meet her eyes and give her a tight little smile. "I've got to stop off at the Watch House this morning to pick up my stuff, so I'll get one of the runners to take the rest for me."

"Captain Winchester?" She looked stricken.

"Just Dean," he told her. "Not a captain anymore." And he retreated before she could say anything that would break his calm.

Running through his mind as he escaped the laundry was a list of the people Dean knew he would have to talk to that day, starting with Henryks and Jody at the Watch House - and probably any of the constables who were around when he went there - and swiftly moving on to Bobby Singer. He would have to try and get to Exile's Gate early, or the over-efficient rumour mill would get there before him, and Bobby would be seriously pissed if he heard the news from anyone but Dean himself. He would also have to let Sam and Adam know. Perhaps he could walk back to the Collegium later. It wasn't as though he would have anything better to do.

They would want to know what he was going to do, all of them. And the only answer Dean had was that he knew what he _wasn't_ going to do, which was almost everything. He had been dismissed from the Watch. There weren't many legitimate positions open to him after that.

It was too much to hope that he could avoid Ellen; she was waiting for him when he returned to his room. And from the look on her face, she had either guessed or …

"Tell me the rumour mill hasn't got here already," he said, brushing past her and retrieving the bundle of uniforms from his bed.

"No, but I'm not stupid," she said harshly. "I guessed what had happened when you didn't come back last night. He gave you your papers."

"That makes it sound all nice and friendly," he retorted. "No, he didn't give me my papers. I got dismissed without character, for disobeying orders and dereliction of duty."

Ellen sucked in a breath. "Damn, boy."

Dean shrugged. "Guess it was always in the cards, yeah? Not like he ever liked me."

"What are you going to do?" she demanded.

Since he didn't know, he shrugged again.

"Well, shit," Ellen said, and yeah, that pretty much summed it up.

 

xXx

 

Luckily for Dean, it was Rufus on the desk when he arrived at the Watch House. Shift change wasn't for another half-candlemark, and after the encounter with Ellen, Dean had changed his mind; if Henryks and Jody weren't around, then he wasn't going to stick around to talk to them. He would come back at a later date to make his farewells. Maybe.

Had it been Murgo on the desk, Dean knew he could have expected drama, but Rufus had been with the Ropewalk Watch for too long; he'd seen it all, including a number of Captains come and go. So when a distinctly mufti Dean handed him the bundle of uniforms with instructions for their disposal, there was only the barest hitch in his expression before he acknowledged the order with his usual gruffness and carried on as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.

Ash was a different matter. "Deano!" he greeted him, with his usual lazy smile. "Long time gone, my man - the man in Command wants to see you real bad about that."

"Yeah, I got that memo already," Dean said shortly, scanning the contents of his desk and trying to remember if he had anything personal there that he needed to take with him. "Ash, have you got the key to the arms locker?"

There was a pause. When he looked up, Ash was studying him with a wary eye.

"Rockin' the off-duty look there, Dean my man," he said slowly.

"Yeah, I had to return all my uniforms," Dean said. They stared at each other. "So, you got that key? 'Cause I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to be here anymore, and I want to grab my bows before Henryks has to throw me out."

"Shit," Ash breathed.

"Pretty much. Key?"

"They cannot do this."

"Pretty sure they already have," Dean said wearily. "Ash, for the love of Keirnys, the key please? I got places I gotta be today that are at opposite ends of the city."

"Shit," Ash said again, but he fished the arms locker key out of a drawer in his own desk and handed over. "Dean …"

"Yeah, yeah, I know. We'll get drunk together later, after I've been screamed at by Uncle Bobby and my kid brothers." Dean was already backing out of the office.

He made it to the arms locker without encountering anyone else, and retrieved the long leather cases containing his hunting bows and quiver. He was locking up again when it occurred to him that he'd left his Bully back at the Roadhouse. Strictly speaking, the Bully was supposed to be returned along with every other piece of standard issue equipment, but in practice no one ever gave it back unless they were forced to. Watch officers were no more superstitious about their line of work than anyone else - which was to say, they were pretty superstitious about a handful of specific things, and the Bully was one of them. Each constable got issued with a Bully on the day they took oath, and that was theirs for the duration of their service. There were very limited circumstances under which a Watch officer would touch or use another officer's Bully, and losing or breaking it was usually considered to be a pretty bad omen.

Really, there was no point in handing it back. No one else would use it, not even a raw recruit, so Dean might as well keep it. It might come in handy, after all.

He slung the bow-cases and quiver over his shoulder, and was on his way back to the office to return the key to Ash when his luck ran out and he ran into Henryks - and wow, Henryks looked _pissed_.

"Winchester, what the fuck is going on?" he hissed.

"Pretty sure you're the captain of this Watch now," Dean told him. He slapped him on the shoulder. "Congratulations!"

Henryks looked like he was chewing on something really foul-tasting. After a moment's struggle, he stabbed a finger at Dean. "You need to get back in your office," he said tightly.

"No, really, you can't order me around, man - "

"Dean, the District Commander wants to see you!"

"I've already had that little shot of sunshine and rainbows," Dean said sourly. "Why do you think I'm dressed for Harvestfest? I went up to Command yesterday, as soon as I got back. Look, I love you, man, but I can't deal with this right now. I'll come talk to you and Jody in a day or so."

He pushed past Henryks, decided that dealing with Ash a second time was beyond his ability to cope with on top of this, and went straight to the front desk. Rufus could give Ash the key -

Oh, for crying out loud.

Olivia was in the reception area, and with her was a vaguely familiar figure with a moustache, straw hat, and gaudy street-performer clothes. She looked thoroughly exasperated, but that was nothing compared to the withering glare Rufus was pinning her companion with.

"Lemme get this straight," he was growling. "You lost that goddamned dancing nanny-goat again?"

"There are some things about this place I am not gonna miss," Dean said, and at the sound of his voice the man turned to wink mischievously at him.

Dean blinked. _No way …_

He wheeled around and walked across to the notice board on the opposite wall. Yep - the sketch Murgo had made was still pinned up there; he yanked it down, stalked back to the desk and slapped it down in front of the man.

"Your brother's looking for you, Gabriel."

For a split second he saw the man's eyes widen in panic, then it was gone and he was laughing deprecatingly. "I believe you mistake me for someone else, Captain, my name is Loki - "

"You seriously want to try that with me?" Dean switched languages. "Loki's the god of tricksters, thieves and card-sharps. My people are from Jkatha too." Gabriel spluttered half-hearted denials. "Look, I don't care - I'm not the captain here anymore. But when Castiel comes back to Haven, you should at least send him a note or something, to let him know you're still alive. You'll find him at the Palace; he's a Herald now."

Gabriel stared at him, wide-eyed.

Dean switched back to Valdemaran. "And for the last time - not that it's any of my business anymore - but would you _please_ keep that thrice-damned goat under control? Spring Equinox is just round the corner, man, she's gonna end up on someone's spit if you don't tie her up properly."

Gabriel gazed at him for a moment, and his expression softened. "Did the rain you prayed for deliver you from the _garuya_ , my friend?"

Dean stared back at him, and shook his head, blowing out a noisy sigh of aggravation. Apparently Castiel had been right about his brother and Kali. "That woman ain't my problem now either, but you should tell her to knock off the prophesies, because she might just find Henryks here a tougher mouthful to chew on."

Gabriel swept him a melodramatic bow. "I shall convey the message - when I have found my Esmeralda again!"

Dean turned to look at Henryks. "He's all yours, buddy."

Henryks glowered at him. "Dean, will you listen to me for one goddamned minute? The District Commander's in your office with a Herald, and they want to see you now!"

This felt perilously like a final straw. "Haven't I seen enough fucking Heralds for one lifetime?" Dean protested, slapping the counter angrily. "What more can they _want_ from me?"

"How the hell should I know?! Get in there and find out, dammit!"

"You may be captain here now, but you are not the boss of me," Dean grouched at him, but he headed for the office anyway. He stalked through the door without knocking, and was brought up short on the threshold by the sight of Herald Kolsen and – "Ma'am," he said, back stiffening instinctively.

It was the District Commander from the next district, someone Dean saw only rarely and who never failed to inspire in him a strong desire to do something embarrassingly submissive.

"Captain Winchester," she said crisply. "You're out of uniform."

Dean gaped at her. "I - With respect, ma'am, I'm not a Watch officer any more. I have to hand my uniforms back."

She raised an eyebrow at him. "Is that so?"

He fought the entirely irrational urge to apologise and, perhaps, drop to his knees in front of her. "Yes, ma'am. I was dismissed by District Command yesterday afternoon."

"That's interesting," she said dryly. "I took over command of this District yesterday morning, and I'm sure I would have remembered taking the time out to dismiss you, as I would have had to have left a meeting with the Provost Marshal to do it."

Dean stared at her, bewildered. "What?"

Kolsen coughed softly. "I believe this is my fault. I intended to take the time to attend to the matter of the former District Commander personally, but other matters got in the way and apparently that gave him the opportunity to make mischief." He favoured both Dean and the Commander with a small smile that was oddly alarming. "I can see that I shall have to deal with his case personally. My apologies, Captain Winchester, you should never have been put in that position. Please be assured that you have _not_ been dismissed from the Watch; we are, in fact, relying on you to continue performing excellently in your post."

Dean glanced involuntarily at the Commander – like she could countermand anything the Lord Marshal's Herald said! – but she just nodded briskly in agreement.

"Couldn't put it better myself. Captain, we came here with the intention of holding a formal debriefing in respect of the arson attacks, and also so that I could familiarise myself with your Watch, but I can see that my predecessor has thrown a kink into that plan, so perhaps we should reconvene – shall we say at the same hour tomorrow morning? Herald Kolsen, would that suit you?"

"That will be fine," Kolsen said, with a nod. "I can use the time today to inspect the Central Guard Command. It's been a while and they won't be expecting me. That's always educational for everyone."

"Excellent. In that case, Captain, I'll see you tomorrow."

"Yes, ma'am."

The Commander nodded to them and departed, leaving Dean alone with Kolsen, Dean still dazedly wondering if he ought to grovel in some way.

"I imagine this is rather a shock," Kolsen said conversationally. "In an ideal world the former Commander would have been dealt with some time ago, but he'd been in office long enough to have dug himself in quite effectively. And I wanted him out of the Watch completely, not reprimanded and shuffled into some other position where he could continue to make mischief."

Dean stared at him. "What?" he managed.

Kolsen raised his eyebrows. "Well, the wage-skimming is regrettably considered a lesser form of financial malfeasance - "

"Wage-skimming?"

"Ah … you didn't know. That explains a great deal. I thought perhaps you had guessed your Watch and several others were being short-paid."

Dean carefully put his bow-cases and quiver on his desk, then rubbed his face with both hands. His hangover really wasn't helping him to make sense of this.

"So," he said carefully, "you're saying that me and everyone else on this Watch have been getting short wages for … how long?"

"We think since your father died," Kolsen replied, "although some financial irregularity may have been going on before then. But we can definitely say that the wage-skimming began in earnest at that time, probably because a canny individual recognised that the major upheavals caused by your father's dismissal and death offered a prime opportunity for it. Several other local Watch Houses had a reshuffle of staff at the same time, which made it possible for the culprits to interfere with their wage streams too."

"When did you find out about this?"

"Your clerk, Ash, noticed almost immediately, but he made the mistake of questioning it and he was quickly reassigned to a position at District Command, where he could be kept under control. Nevertheless, he was canny and managed to amass a considerable file of evidence, which he turned over to the Provost Marshall's office shortly before the arson incidents kicked off. After that, it was a matter of picking our moment really." Kolsen smiled slightly. "The District Commander wasn't operating alone; we wanted to make sure we nabbed several other individuals, including the clerks in two other Watch Houses."

There was a long silence then. Dean really had no idea what to say, except -

"So does this mean we all get a pay rise?"

Kolsen chuckled. "No, but you will start getting the pay you're actually due. Ideally, you would also immediately get back the money you are owed, but unfortunately we can't do that until we track down exactly where it all went. As soon as we do that, I will be petitioning for you all to receive it. You have my word on that."

"Good enough," Dean admitted.

"Excellent. In that case I really must take my leave. I'll see you tomorrow, Captain." Kolsen shot him a swift smile, and left.

Less than a minute later Henryks walked into the office and offered Dean his bundle of uniforms. "I caught the runner just as Rufus was sending her off with them," he said.

"Thanks," Dean said weakly.

"So …" Henryks said. "We've got a new Commander."

"Looks like it," Dean agreed.

The two of them pondered this for a moment.

"I'm thinking kneepads could be a good idea," Henryks offered eventually. "These stone flags get kind of hard after a while."

"Yeah," Dean said, "yeah, kneepads would probably be good."

"Me, I'm thinking leather codpieces," Ash announced from the doorway.

"And you're gonna keep that thought to yourself in future," Dean told him firmly.

He chased the pair of them out of the office for a quarter-candlemark, enough time to let him change into a uniform and try to get his head back into some sort of order. The latter was a lot harder than he expected; he'd worked there on and off for half his life and knew the Ropewalk Watch House like the back of his own hand, but for the first time in years it seemed a strange and unsettling place to him, as though something or someone that should have been there was unaccountably missing.

And for the life of him, Dean couldn't work out what - or who - that might be.

 

xXx

 

A few weeks later, Dean was rudely awakened by someone murdering the ballad "Windrider Unchained" in the street below his window. Much to his annoyance, this was not a singular occurrence; similar incidents had been happening almost daily over the past week, as everyone prepared for the Spring Festival that was held during the two days around the Equinox. Unfortunately for Dean, he was working the night shift in the run up to having both days as rest days, a deal he always struck with Jody who, for reasons known only to herself, preferred not to celebrate. (They swapped at Autumn Equinox, when Dean preferred not to celebrate.) People practicing instruments outside his window at an hour when he was trying to sleep was becoming a serious problem, especially when they played those instruments very badly, accompanied by one or more persons singing slightly out of tune.

And why the hell was it so much more annoying when they were only _slightly_ out of tune? Desperately off-key drunks sang in the street at all hours of the day and night, and sometimes even sang in the taproom below if Ellen was too busy to evict them promptly; Dean slept through that with no problem whatsoever. But someone who missed only the occasional high note, or who was marginally out of time with the musician? He wanted to smother them.

But it was the unearthly howling noise from the outer room that made him drag his head out from under his pillow and lurch out of bed to go investigate.

Baby was standing on the window cill, glaring down at the would-be musician through a crack in the shutters that she'd managed to work open with a paw, and she was growling like a hell-hound.

"I'm with you, sweetheart," Dean grumbled, yanking the shutter back properly and sticking his own head out. Sunlight hit his eyes painfully and his mood dropped by a few more percentage points. "I don't care who the fuck you are, if you don't take that damned lute and fuck off _right this minute_ , I'm coming down there, and after I've arrested you I'm setting my cat on you."

His eyes were watering too much to see who it was, but he had the satisfaction of hearing several pairs of feet beating a rapid retreat. Dean pulled his head back in and slammed the shutters closed again.

"I don't know what the hell Ellen was thinking when she had that bench set up out there," he muttered, and he staggered back to bed, only to realise half a candlemark later that it was too late - he was utterly unable to go back to sleep.

So he dragged one of his blankets around him and went down to the kitchen in search of coffee, where he found Ellen doling out spices to Podina and Anaelia who were mixing up a huge batch of sweetened dough.

"You don't need to tell me, we heard 'em too," she said, seeing his face and going to pour him a mugful of coffee. "I'll get a couple of the boys to move the bench 'til Festival's over."

"Why are they always _bad_ musicians?"

"Because no one kicks a good musician out into the street to practice," Ellen retorted. "You want Podina to set you a pan of wash-water to heat?"

"Nah, you guys are busy. I'll head over to the bath-house in a while. Might as well make the most of being up, like, _three candlemarks_ early." Dean toasted them all with his mug, and retreated.

Back in his rooms, he pulled on his breeches and shirt from the previous day and sat in the window to drink his coffee. The truth was, it wasn't just the local would-be bards who were making his life difficult; he hadn't been sleeping properly for some time, but he couldn't put a finger on why. For the first time since adolescence he was restless all the time, but although Jody had told him it was just spring when he'd recklessly confided in her, he knew it wasn't that. Something was off-kilter in his life - something was _missing_ \- and it made it hard for him to settle to do anything the way he knew he should.

And it frightened him a little, because the last time he'd felt this constant low-level itch under his skin, he'd upped and joined the Guard, desperate to escape his existence in the city. He was surely too old to give in to urges like that anymore, and yet he couldn't deny that part of him no longer felt fully engaged with his current life.

Besides, where would he go and what would he do? Watch officers who tried to join the Guard got laughed out of the recruiting office. But sometimes he found himself staring up at his mother's Keirnys hanging and remembering when it had hung on another wall, in a house a very long way from Haven. Dean had long since taught himself not to think about Dell's Crossing, but the troubles with Sam and the demon had raked up a lot of old history, and that had in turn forced him to recognise that he missed the village and his life there, however unhappy parts of it had been.

Going 'home' was not an option. It _might_ have been a last-ditch, desperate one had he genuinely been thrown out of the Watch all those weeks ago, but right here and now there was no way he could go back there. It would be a journey of many long weeks, months even if he had to do most of it on foot, and he simply didn't have money enough to outfit and provision himself for that journey. And that left out the small detail that he and his family had been forcibly ejected from the village in the first place; he had no idea what the elders might do if he returned there unexpectedly.

Besides, he didn't even know if it was that specifically that he was pining for.

 _Pining_. Gah.

Disgusted with himself, he finished his coffee, pulled on his boots, and went out to the bath-house. Some things in life couldn't be ignored just because he was having _feelings_ and shit, and one of them was bodily cleanliness.   Maybe taking an extended soak would make him feel more like himself; a man could hope.

Walking back to the Roadhouse afterwards, Dean took somewhat desultory note of the preparations being made for the festival. People were doing their best to clean up and refurbish the frontages of their premises, and hanging up the usual ornaments – baskets of flowers for the few who could afford them, dyed straw garlands and festoons made from brightly-coloured rags for the less well-off. Most people would have at least one or two family heirloom ornaments made of painted pottery and wood, or perhaps tooled leather, that they would hang out during the festival. (And afterwards the Watch would have a lively couple of weeks trying to track down any particularly nice ones that got stolen.)

A number of hand-drawn floats were being prepared, because the Spring Equinox was also a semi-religious festival during which statues, and gangs of young girls dressed up as the Goddess and her handmaidens, would be loaded up onto painted and be-decked carts and pulled or carried through the streets. Dean had, in fact, already mediated in no less than three quarrels that had erupted over the processions, originating in everything from the order of procession to the hiring of a grey horse to carry one of the young goddesses. To make things even more interesting, the nature of the Strangers Quarter meant that there was a number of religious sects all participating and producing their own interpretations of the goddess, some of which could prove controversial to other members of the community.

And there were orgies of baking going on; everywhere he went, Dean could smell breads, pastries and sweets being prepared. It wasn't always entirely tempting, but he supposed it made a change from the usual street-stink.

He stepped in to break up a screaming fight between two pretty teenaged girls over which of them would be playing the goddess and which the handmaiden (neither of them, now, since they'd managed to claw and punch each other in the face, effectively taking them out of the running), and then a street over had to do the same again with two young boys, for the same reason (their sect always had a handsome boy play the goddess, due to cultural restrictions on women performing in public).

By the time he reached the Roadhouse, it felt like he'd already done half a shift's work and his day hadn't officially even started yet.

Tamar was minding the bar when he walked through; he nodded to her and ran up the back stairs, his mind already running over the long list of things he had to do when he reached the Watch House. It was long enough that he was contemplating going in early to get a head start, when he pushed his door open.

Dean paused on the threshold. Someone was sitting in his window, watching the activity in the street below and absent-mindedly petting a purring Baby in his lap.

Castiel looked up when the door opened, and when he saw Dean standing there he gently lifted Baby and put her on the floor so that he could stand up.

"Dean," he said, when Dean himself couldn't think of anything to say. "I hope you don't mind … Ellen let me in."

Of course she did.

"Heyla, Cas," Dean managed after a moment of staring. Why did it suddenly feel like a rock had been lifted off his chest? He cleared his throat. "When did you get back?"

"Late yesterday." Castiel was watching him closely. "I'm sorry I left so abruptly, without letting you know where I was going, but no one could tell me for sure when you would wake up and I didn't want to delay my mission."

Right. His mission.

Dean closed the door behind him and took a couple of uncertain steps into the room. Now that the moment had arrived – and he had absolutely _not_ been dwelling all this time on the fact that Castiel had disappeared without a word in the first place – he wasn't sure that he wanted to have this conversation with him. People moved on all the time ( _don't get attached, everyone leaves eventually_ ) and a clean break was usually easier all round. But Castiel clearly hadn't received that message.

"Didn't think trainees got sent on missions," Dean said, with an attempt at lightness. "But what do I know about Heralds?"

"It was a personal matter, nothing official," Castiel said.

"Oh. Right. Well … glad the dip in the river didn't do you any damage, and by the way, thanks for yanking me out, that had to be a pain in the butt. Oh, and hey, is this handprint on my shoulder yours? Because that's kind of weird but - "

"You're not going to ask where I've been, are you?" Castiel interrupted him wryly.

Dean held his hands up. "It's none of my business."

"You're wrong, it's very much your business, but we'll talk about the handprint if that's what you want. Does it hurt? It shouldn't by now. May I see?"

"Why, what are you gonna do to it?" Dean demanded.

"Nothing … there's no need to hunch up like that, Dean, do you really think I'm going to hurt you?"

"Rather not take my shirt off, if it's all the same to you."

"Why? This will hardly be the first time I've seen you shirtless."

"Why am I always the one who has to get naked?" Dean grumbled, and Castiel rolled his eyes.

"Then take your arm out of the sleeve! There's really no call to be such a child about it."

"Easy for you to say, with all your clothes on," Dean muttered, but he yanked the hem of his shirt out of his trousers, pulled the lacing at his neck loose and wriggled his arm out of his sleeve. "There. Happy?"

"Overjoyed," Castiel said dryly. "I'm sorry it left a mark at all, but we were being swept down the river at the time – there wasn't much opportunity for finesse. Does it hurt?"

"No, it – "

Castiel fitted his hand over the mark, and Dean drew in a sharp, stuttering breath, because just like that it seemed like his hard-won, carefully-maintained mental shields were gone as though they'd never existed, and in their place was …

 _It's all right._ Castiel was holding his arm, and gripping the back of his neck gently with his other hand. _It's all right, Dean._

He didn't realise he was moving until his back hit the wall, but Castiel was still holding him and standing close enough that their noses were nearly touching. And a part of Dean wanted to say _personal space, Cas, we've talked about this_ , but that would be pointless, because Castiel's physical proximity wasn't really the issue anymore.

"Do you feel this?" Castiel asked, barely a murmur of sound, and Dean stared at him wide-eyed. "Do you understand?" Dean shook his head.

_I wanted to tell you of this, to explain it to you first, but I knew as soon as I saw your face, when you walked through the door, that you would never hear me out._

_Pretty sure you're breaking, like, one of the biggest rules there is about this stuff._

Castiel's lips curved up in a smile. _And yet my shields are still in place, and so are yours._

He was right. Dean knew it at once. He could 'feel' the place beneath his feet where he was grounded, and 'feel' the invisible skin of his shields surrounding him. "Son of a bitch," he breathed. "What the hell?"

_There is a term for it._

But it wasn't a word, it wasn't something that could be spoken out loud. What Castiel showed Dean was … a concept, something so immense and complicated and all-encompassing that it could only be articulated mind to mind. And he instinctively recognised it.

Castiel's smile grew, as he watched Dean's face and saw him realise that _oh, so that's what was making me go nuts_. Which to Dean felt like a seriously anticlimactic response, except for all the inner responses where it wasn't.

"We share a profound bond," Castiel said. "Do you understand now?"

He did, but Dean wouldn't be Dean if he didn't put up at least a token protest. "Cas, come on … only people in songs and stories have lifebonds."

He was expecting a huff and maybe an eyeroll. Instead, Castiel pursed his lips a little and nodded. "You're quite right," he said gravely, but his eyes were alight with amusement. "We should notify the Bards at once, so they can set to work on that."

 

xXx

 

They ended up sitting in the window, with Baby between the two of them like a very disinterested duenna.

("Is this the part where we have sex?"

"No, Dean. This is the part where we have to talk."

"Saying _we have to talk_ is no way to start a relationship. Just saying."

"Then it's just as well this isn't the start of our relationship, isn't it?")

"So does this mean you're going to be inside my head all the time now?" Dean asked, a little warily. Because truth be told, he knew next to nothing about lifebonds except what anyone knew from hearing ballads about Sun and Shadow. And he didn't care how romantic people said that was; Sun and Shadow were _not_ a great example of a healthy relationship in his opinion.

"No," Castiel said, amused. "I don't think either of us would enjoy that."

"Right. But I can't shield you out."

"Yes, you can. You just need to put a little extra effort into it."

Well, that wasn't so bad. All the same – "You do realise how much effort I have to put into it already?" Dean grumbled, mostly because it was true. It felt like he had to check his shields every time he blinked some days, because if he didn't people started twitching weirdly around him, or - worse – he would start picking up on random thoughts around him, and for the most part that was not amusing.

Herald Raylor had explained to Dean that he'd probably been picking up on background thoughts and emotions for years, but only in a very distant kind of way, and that how he was now was a completely different game that would quickly get out of hand if he didn't control it. Before, he had just been mostly 'listening', but now he was actively 'projecting' as well, and with considerable strength. Dean understood that, even if he didn't like it much. What no one had been prepared to explain was _why_ this had suddenly happened. The nearest thing to an explanation had come from Herald Ansel, who had remarked that the head injury probably hadn't helped, but according to Raylor Dean had already been projecting at a painful level well before he'd gone into the river.

He had his suspicions about it now, though.

"It will get easier," Castiel told him gently. "It won't be long before you realise you don't have to check all the time because your mind has adjusted and holds the shields naturally, without effort." He smiled faintly. "The effort then will be lowering them when you want to."

"Yeah, that ain't gonna happen," Dean muttered.

"It's a tool, Dean, that's all. It can cut you – and the people around you – like a knife if you handle it irresponsibly, but it can also be very useful to you."

"I did better without it." Dean grimaced. "Is it part of the – " he gestured between them, "you know, the lifebond?"

Castiel hesitated. "If you're asking if I'm responsible for your gift suddenly developing the way it has, then … I would have to be honest and say that I'm at least partially responsible, yes. Not because of the lifebond, but because I too am a strong Mindspeaker."

"Right." He'd guessed, but that didn't make it any easier to hear.

"Will you let me explain?"

"Is that gonna make it any better?" That came out very close to a snap, and Dean gritted his teeth. He wasn't going to apologise for being angry about something which was going to change his life in ways he probably had no context for yet.

"You've always been a Mindspeaker, Dean," Castiel said patiently. "This isn't a new thing – "

"Are you kidding me? Let me tell you, Cas, this feels pretty damn new to me! You know what? There's a woman maybe four or five streets away, she's the wife of some guy ... I don't even know what he does, it don't matter, but what I do know is that she's having a fling with another guy who drives carts, and you know how I know that? Because the other day I lost my shields for like a handful of breaths, and that just happened to be a moment when she was thinking how amazingly well-hung he is compared to her husband. And she didn't just tell me that, Cas, I got a full-on visual, and let me tell you, I did not need to be seeing that shit right in the middle of roll-call." Dean stabbed a finger at Castiel. "Don't you dare laugh! A month ago I wasn't hearing shit like this, and it is not funny!"

Castiel was smiling wryly. "Believe me, Dean, I know that only too well. You did something very similar to me not long after we met."

"The _fuck_ – I did not!"

"You did. The day you caught the laundress here watching while you were bathing?"

Dean opened his mouth to deny this – and shut it again with a snap, as he suddenly, vividly, recalled what had happened. His face heated uncomfortably.

"It wasn't your lack of clothing that bothered me," Castiel supplied helpfully. "You dropped your guard over your mind for a few moments, and because I wasn't as guarded around you as I should have been, I saw a lot more in your mind than I should have. And _that_ I will apologise for, it was an unforgivable breach of your privacy."

Dean looked away. "What did you see?"

"Enough to understand that you may not be as comfortable with this relationship between us as you are trying to pretend."

"Cas … no." Dean scrubbed his face with both hands for a moment, wishing he'd had more for breakfast than that single cup of coffee earlier. "It's not – I don't – "

"You told me later about your relationship with your father," Castiel said gently. "What you didn't tell me then was the one thing I'd already seen in your memories, the way he reacted to your friendship with one of the other Guard cadets."

"Kal _was_ just a friend," Dean said, looking down at his hands. It was really difficult for him to meet Castiel's eyes. "Dad overreacted."

"But he wasn't entirely wrong, was he?"

"I never understood why he flipped out at me like that. Even if me and Kal _had_ been fooling around – and we hadn't, because you don't have time when you're a cadet – but even if we had, it's not like it's that big a deal among our folks, or even back home in the village. I mean, no one talks about it much and you don't flaunt yourself, but no one gets on your case about it unless you're making trouble for someone. I don't get why Dad laid into me for it."

"Perhaps I can explain that, then."

Dean blinked at him. "What?"

Castiel smiled. "Since you seem determined not to ask, I will tell you where I've been," he said. "I went to Dell's Crossing."

Dean stared at him blankly for a moment. "Dell's Crossing … _why?_ "

"Several reasons. Partly to assist some investigators Herald Kolsen was sending there , and partly to meet with the village _Gar-gello_ there – who is, as you noted some time ago, the only consecrated Bel priest left in Valdemar other than myself. And also partly because I wanted to discover the facts behind the story you told me about your family."

"You think I lied to you?" Dean demanded.

"No, Dean, I think you were a badly traumatised ten year old child when you left your village, and while I didn't doubt your honesty, I did believe that there was more to the story than you were likely to know or remember. The only way to discover that was to go there and ask the people who knew, and I will say that it was very enlightening." Castiel drew a breath. "But the first thing I must tell you is that I met your grandparents."

That … took a moment to digest. Dean heard himself ask, distantly, "They're still alive?"

"And in very good health, although growing elderly of course. They gave me many messages for you and your brothers – primarily that they hope you'll at least visit them one day, if you can."

"I could go home?" Dean said, very quietly. He hadn't expected that.

Castiel nodded firmly. "I knew you'd ask that, but the village elders and _Gar-gello_ all assured me that the banishment never applied to you or Sam or Adam, only to your father."

"Right … right. Thanks."

"We should talk about your father," Castiel prompted, after a moment or two. "Firstly, about who he was."

"I always thought he came from eastern Jkatha, just not the same village we did," Dean commented.

"Well, your grandfather and several of the other elders dispute this. Your father certainly claimed to be a woodsman from that region, but they say they always believed that was a story he told in the hope of being accepted. He spoke the language very well, but with a trace of an accent, and your grandfather believes he was actually from southern Rethwellan. The most agreed upon thing they all said about him was that everyone believed he'd been a mercenary for a while, because he had something of a soldier's bearing and – this is a quote – he treated every tool he handled like a weapon."

"Not gonna argue with that," Dean said. "I noticed, but it was just … everyone was wary on the border. Sometimes there were bandits. You had to be careful."

"They said that they didn't question it too much, because he was good at his work and every pair of hands was needed. And if he could handle weapons during a bandit attack, so much the better. But it was agreed that he wasn't who he claimed to be. Your grandfather believes his name truly was Jon, but the name Winchester – which he also recognised – he says your father claimed was just one he'd picked up during his travels. I suspect, however, that it may have been his true name, or at least a name he genuinely had some claim to, or he wouldn't have reverted to it so readily later."

"Right," Dean said. "Not sure what I'm supposed to think about that."

Castiel shrugged. "Nothing at all, perhaps, except that Winchester is as much your rightful name as Lanceiro. That your father may have come from Rethwellan is more to the point, because it would explain his reaction to same-sex relationships. Homosexuality is viewed in a very negative way there."

"Not sure what I'm supposed to think about that either."

"It offers an explanation of his behaviour, if not an excuse."

"Right." Dean paused. "Did you tell them about the demon?"

"Not the village as a whole, no," Castiel said dryly, and Dean had to grin a little at his tone.

"I'll bet you didn't."

"I discussed it with the _Gar-gello_. You were right when you told me that your father sprang it on his accusers, after your stepmother's death – the _Gar-gello_ was quite upset when I told him that there genuinely was a demon, although that was mostly because he felt much of what happened could have been avoided if only your father had been honest about it from the beginning."

"Yeah, no," Dean said flatly. "Firstly – you're not gonna tell me the little old priest I remember could have handled that demon himself."

Castiel smiled. "That did occur to me too, but I wasn't about to tell him so, Dean."

"And second, the minute anyone in the village heard the word _garuya_ , they would've run Dad out of there with pitchforks, no matter what the _Gar-gello_ said. I mean, that's why we went out of our way to avoid mentioning demons _here!_ "

"Just so, but I assured the _Gar-gello_ that the matter had been dealt with. He was comfortable with my explanation once he knew I was a _han'garuya_." He paused. "Much as I dislike prevaricating, I didn't mention that Sam and yourself had been possessed by it, though. It seemed better to pass over that."

Dean thought that if his father had claimed the demon preyed on his family, then the _Gar-gello_ had probably guessed that part, but he let it go. The likelihood of him returning the village was as remote as ever, given his circumstances, so it was unlikely the demon possession would be an issue.

"So, was that everything?" he asked.

"No, but it was a substantial part. I would add that your grandparents knew you were a Mindspeaker, and until she died your mother was teaching you in the traditional way to shield yourself. Your grandmother told me that you seemed to block the ability after your mother died, though, which is something I suspected. Early trauma will often do that." Castiel paused. "She also mostly confirmed my other suspicion – that your father knew of your gift and believed it had attracted the _garuya_ to you. She told me that some of your parents' quarrels had been because Jon was suspicious of Mary's ability to read his mind, and he wasn't happy that you had inherited it."

"So he did think I was responsible."

"Yes, I think so. Which is unfortunate, because – "

"- it was actually Sam all along."

Castiel blinked and sat back. "How did you work that out?"

Dean shrugged. "Made sense. He was the only one of us who was there every time, even when he was just a baby. I was on the other side of the village when Kate died."

"And he had a gift of his own, but not one easily recognisable or strong enough for your mother to see it and shield him. You know about his gift by now, I assume."

"Yeah, not that he's said anything to me about it himself."

"You'll need to give him time to accept it," Castiel said, watching Dean's face. "I spoke to him while you were with the Healers. He blames himself, even though he understands that, rationally, none of this was his fault. If anything it was your father's fault for not seeking help much sooner, but I suspect that the demon had a greater influence over Jon than anyone knew, including himself. That's something I think you need to consider and perhaps talk to your brothers about, Dean. I find it highly unlikely that the demon waited so long to act – I think it's more likely that Jon allowed it to possess him in some degree as an attempt to prevent it attacking you and Sam, or even Adam. That probably explains his use of drugs and attempts to use talismans to control it. He may even have been successful to some extent."

"Yeah, I guess … I mean, I sort of worked that out too. It makes sense, as much as anything about this does."

"I don't believe he hated you," Castiel said gently, after a moment, and Dean blinked at him, surprised. "I think he was very afraid, and he had reason to be, even though he handled it badly. I think it's very possible that he tried to run from the _garuya,_ but didn't realise until it was too late that it could track him by his bloodline and there was nowhere he, or you, could hide from it. People do terrible things when they're afraid."

"I know," Dean said, and he did, he really did, but … "I know up here," he said, tapping his forehead, "it's just difficult to know it _here_." He tapped his chest.

"Understandable. And there are things he did which are more difficult to comprehend. His handling of the situation with your stepmother is very hard to justify."

Dean thought about Kate. "You know … it's taken a long time, but I can see now that she was pretty much a victim, like the rest of us, but a victim of the whole thing. He brought her into that, he didn't have to and he must have known the risk, but he did it anyway and she probably never stood a chance."

"And he told her that you were responsible for your mother's death, which made matters much worse."

Dean looked up, startled, and Castiel made a face.

"I also met with her mother at the sawmill community – her father has since died. But she confirmed that Jon told them you had set the fire that burned the first house down. He explained it away as an accident, a child playing with embers, but he did hold you responsible for it. That probably explains why Kate was less than welcoming of you."

"Great," Dean sighed. He leaned back against the window frame and stared out into the street below for a while. Several people passed, each carrying an unconvincing papier-mâché hobbyhorse decorated with dyed rag streamers and dully-clinking pottery bells. Someone else was blowing random notes on a tuneless pennywhistle a short way up the street.

When he looked up again, Castiel was smiling at him. "I'm glad I returned in time for Spring Festival," he said.

"You say that," Dean told him darkly, "but that's just because no one's waking _you_ up by singing badly outside your window at all hours of the day and night."

Castiel chuckled.

"So is that everything?" Dean asked him after a moment or two. "I kind of find it hard to believe that you went all that way just to find out about my dad."

"That's because I didn't," Castiel reminded him.

"Yeah, right, Herald Kolsen's investigators. More Heralds? That had to be interesting, I don't believe anyone on that part of the border has ever seen a Herald before. I never even heard of them before we came to Haven!"

"Not Heralds, no – some other operatives, people working for Herald Kolsen."

That tweaked Dean's interest. Even people in the Watch talked and speculated sometimes, and it stood to reason that someone very close to the Heraldic Circle, if not actually _in_ it, had to handle the inevitable spies and 'other operatives' that went with government and the Crown. Dean had never thought about it in any detail before, but having met Kolsen now, he could all too readily believe that the man might be the Lord Marshal's spymaster.

"And I had business of my own with the _Gar-gello_ ," Castiel added casually.

"Yeah?" Dean blinked at him.

"Well, I had a long talk with Herald Ansel – "

Dean groaned. "And let me guess - he got you to tell him all about the stuff you most hate to talk to people about."

Castiel laughed softly. "Not quite that. But he did point out that my vows as a priest might be incompatible with my new life as a Herald, so it was necessary that I go to the _Gar-gello_ and ask him to relieve me of them."

"Huh."

"Strictly speaking, I should have returned to my own temple, of course, but I knew many weeks ago that I would not be returning to Jkatha."

"That's gotta be tough," was all Dean could think of to say.

"Not really. As I explained to you before, my role as a _han'garuya_ was becoming less and less necessary, enough so that had the summons here not come, I was expecting to be reassigned to one of the temple's regular military units. I would have accepted that – _then_. But my true purpose is now revealed."

"That's a little strong for an average guy like me, Cas," Dean said dryly, getting to his feet. "Look, thanks for coming to tell me about my grandparents … and all the other stuff. But I gotta go on duty soon and – "

"Dean." Castiel stood up too, and he grabbed Dean's arm as Dean went to step away from him. He sighed. "I swear you are the most stubborn man I've ever met. The _Gar-gello_ relieved me of my vows, Dean – _all_ of them."

When in doubt, Dean resorted to flippancy. "And you couldn't have told me that _before_ we spent an hour talking about my old village instead?"

The look Castiel gave him was unimpressed; he tugged insistently on Dean's arm, pulling him close.

"I don't want to wrestle."

"Stop that, and _come here._ "

Castiel pulled him into a close embrace, and Dean's muscles locked up for a second at the unexpected contact. No one had tried to hug him since he was a boy; even Lisa hadn't attempted to hold him like that, accepting his twitchy personal boundaries without comment. But Castiel simply held on, waiting for Dean to relax before putting a hand on the back of his head and guiding it to his shoulder, and after a moment he found his hands had settled in the small of Castiel's back.

It was … comfortable. Comforting, even. Something he hadn't realised he'd missed after so long.

"Listen to me," Castiel murmured in his ear. "I can't promise I won't leave you, Dean, because life is unpredictable and being a Herald is dangerous. You know as well as I do that it's likely I will be posted to places and duties that could take me away from you for a year or more at a time. But what I will promise you is this: that when I _can_ be with you, then I _will_ be with you, and I will never abandon you. Do you understand?"

Dean tightened his grip on Castiel, wanting to say _you can't promise that, you don't know that, don't you know that everyone always leaves?_ But it was impossible to believe that when Castiel was _right there_ , inside his head, and yes, he knew all of that already, and he was still standing by everything he'd said.

_Do you understand me, Dean?_

_Yes … yes, I get it._

"Then understand too that I love you."

Dean pressed his forehead to Castiel's shoulder for a moment, just breathing. "Yeah, Cas … I get that too."

And he tucked his face into the curve of Castiel's neck and held on a little longer, because he finally believed that he might, just _might_ , for once be allowed to keep something this good.

 

**_~ finis… almost ~_ **

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case anyone is interested: [Windrider Unchained](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN1rJi8rOns).


	9. Epilogue

_Three Days Later_

 

 

There were times when Dean wished he had the means to permanently record a moment, and this was one of them.

"Oh man … who suckered you into this?"

"I wasn't _suckered,_ as you so elegantly put it," Castiel said. "We volunteered."

"Right, right." Dean nodded, holding in his grin with an effort. "It was Father Joe at the little Corner Shrine on Sisal Alley, wasn't it? I saw you talking to him when you left the other day. He always tries to make sure the street kids 'round there get their own procession, but the girl playing the goddess always has to walk because, y'know, they're street kids. Ain't no one gonna hire even an old donkey for her."

"Eslan feels it was a reasonable request," Castiel said mildly, checking the girths on the old-fashioned side-saddle, "and so do I. You know the priest there well?"

"Sure, everyone knows Father Joe. Sam and Adam spent some time with him when we were kids, he never minds keeping an eye on younglings when their parents are dead busy."

"Which temple is he affiliated to?"

Dean leaned against the wall of the ramshackle little stable, folding his arms. "Honestly? No idea. He's some kind of mendicant, and the shrine is his special place – he's been minding it for years. Most of the taverns'll let him sleep on their premises if he asks, and the street folk keep an eye on him. Street folk are his calling, I guess."

"Well, let us hope he wasn't expecting different decorations on the goddess's steed." Castiel smoothed the blindingly bright ribbons bedecking Eslan's mane and tail, and checked the stability of the feathered plume between his ears. The tiny bells on his bridle tinkled sweetly.

"Seriously, you could turn up with Eslan wearing nothing but an old saddle blanket, and it'll still be the best thing those kids have ever had."

"That would hardly be in the spirit of things."

"Hey - no criticisms here." Dean snickered. "Reckon that's the first time I've seen a Companion with a side-saddle, though."

The leather of the saddle was old and worn, but had been beautifully tooled in its day and still showed glimmers of gold leaf here and there in the decoration.

"Yes, and it took some searching to find one," Castiel said wryly. "The Collegium possesses three, but they are all very carefully kept for the use of the Queen and any Chosen princesses on state occasions. Herald Maria kindly borrowed this from her mother's stable."

"You realise this kid won't ever have ridden anything fancier than an old broom handle with a bucket on the end? Asking her to ride Eslan at all, let alone side-saddle, is kinda optimistic."

Eslan snorted and shook his head, giving Dean a pointed look.

"He says you should have more faith in him," Castiel said, amused. "Once she's in the saddle, he'll make sure she doesn't fall off."

"We'd better head out then."

"Not so quickly." Castiel took a step back and very pointedly looked Dean over from head to toe. The mischievous look he gave him made Dean huff and roll his eyes.

"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. Anaelia made 'em for me."

He was wearing a set of heavily embroidered braces over his loose linen shirt, teamed with knee-length dark green breeches, thick knitted and embroidered stockings and his sturdy uniform shoes.

"It's a charmingly traditional look," Castiel said, straight-faced, but his eyes were dancing.

"Damn right it is, city boy!"

_No, truly, I've seen this costume before, but it's rare to see it carried off successfully._

There was a sincerity to Mindspeech that couldn't be matched by the spoken word; Dean was mollified. _Yeah, well I don't care even if it looks dumb. It's a present, and I'm gonna wear 'em anyway._

_Just so, but you don't look dumb, I promise. Quite the opposite._

Dean's lips twitched. _Kinky._

 _Kinky would be wishing to see you in the leather version._ "Shall we set out then?" Castiel said aloud, meeting Dean's look of wide-eyed surprise with a smug little smile.

"Sure, let's go before even the back streets get too crowded to pass." _I'll get you for that!_

_You may try!_

 

xXx

 

The Corner Shrine on Sisal Alley was a stone nook built into the boundary wall of what had once been a temple courtyard. The temple was long gone, and no one even remembered which sect it had belonged to; the row of buildings down the Alley now were all shops of one sort or another. The shrine remained, the statue tucked into the nook worn away over time until there was nothing but the outlines of head, shoulders, and open arms left. The face had long since been chipped off. It probably wouldn't have received any notice from passers-by if it hadn't been for Father Joe setting out his ministry on the short steps beside the statue.

Because he preached and tended to the people who lived on the streets – beggars, abandoned children, the lowliest of prostitutes – there were frequent attempts from some of the local merchants and residents to have Father Joe moved on. No one seemed to know which sect he belonged to and there was no record of anyone granting him authority to care for the battered little shrine, let alone to minister to the local poor. All efforts to dislodge him failed, though. He tended to arouse strong feelings among the tavern keepers like Ellen, who would feed him, launder his robes, and give him shelter on the rare occasion that he asked, and most of the local priests and priestesses seemed to just _know_ when someone was harassing him and would turn out to advise the culprit in trenchant terms of what awaited people who preyed on the meek and righteous. On one occasion someone attempted to dismantle the shrine itself, only to be faced with the wrath of a dozen local prostitutes who pursued them back to their shop and there proceeded to drive off potential customers by heckling and exposing themselves.

Father Joe carried on, begging humbly for meagre coins that he would then use to bargain for leftover foodstuffs from nearby cauponas and bakeries that he would distribute among the most helpless of the street folk. When he had nothing else, he had words of comfort for them, and there was a rumour that he had a minor healing gift that he sometimes deployed in emergencies. Father Joe was usually the first priest on the scene when someone living on the nearby streets died, and he would accompany them to the Paupers' Boneyard if no one else stepped forward to do so.

Needless to say, Dean was _very_ familiar with Father Joe. As he'd told Castiel, Sam and Adam had once or twice been left in Father Joe's care when they were children and Jon had struggled to find anyone else to mind them for a candlemark or two. But he was also accustomed to Father Joe being the person who notified him of local street deaths, and it was an unusual week if one of his constables didn't report _someone_ griping about the priest. Not that Dean took a lot of notice of the complaints, any more than he did of those by Widow Keffrey about her neighbours.

It was a short walk from the run-down stable to Sisal Alley, and when they got there Father Joe's shrine was already surrounded by a small flock of street children. None of them had costumes – most of them were barefoot and lucky to have ragged clothing – but they each had a rather withered branch of greenery to carry, and as Castiel and Eslan stopped by the shrine's steps Dean saw that there were three people with Father Joe who were more vividly-clad.

One was the little girl who had been chosen by lot to play the goddess; she was dressed – unexpectedly - in a kind of wrap that was made of bright apple-green cloth and draped over her tattered dress, and her hair had been pinned up with a spray of actual artificial flowers interspersed with shiny metal ornaments. From the look on her face, she was utterly overwhelmed by this.

Beside her, with one hand resting on her shoulder, stood Lady Kali, dressed in an even more vivid sky-blue gown and wearing a multitude of bracelets and necklaces. Today she wore no headdress, and consequently she was revealed as a slight woman probably some five or six inches shorter than Dean. Not that her lack of height in any way diminished her, and Dean was pretty sure that his own wry expression upon seeing her was _nothing_ compared to the cool look she pinned him with.

The third person was dressed in a wildly patterned tunic and trousers, with what looked like a turban on his head, and his skin was painted the same blue shade as Kali's gown. Dean didn't need to hear Castiel's exasperated sigh of _"Gabriel"_ to recognise him.

He wondered idly where Esmeralda the dancing goat was. It was probably just as well that she wasn't immediately evident, given how annoyed Castiel already looked.

And wasn't that sweet? Dean had suffered a couple of gentle, amused lectures from Castiel already, about being tolerant of Kali and the way she had somehow persuaded the Lord Patriarch's people to let her carry on her practices in the lower city virtually unhindered. Dean knew it was petty of him, but it was undeniably satisfying to see the tables turned somewhat.

_Come on now, Cas, the guy's just trying to make a living. Sure, it's unorthodox and maybe a little embarrassing for his relatives, but –_

_You're not as funny as you think you are!_

Castiel stalked up to the other man and looked him up and down in such a scathing way that Dean actually felt a little sorry for Gabriel. As for Gabriel, his expression was far from conciliatory but Dean didn't miss the pinched look around his eyes or the tension in his shoulders. Ouch. This had the potential to get ugly.

"Heyla, Bro – "

"Shut up. Give me one good reason why I shouldn't tell your mother where you are, Gabriel."

"Do you want me to shut up or give you a reason?"

Oh wow … Castiel's face turned impressively stormy at this. Dean wasn't sure whether he wanted to laugh or flinch, because on the one hand it was fun to see this whole new side to Castiel's personality – he'd suspected there was a temper in there somewhere – but this was a little too much like some of the confrontations he'd had with Sam and Adam over the years. He wondered if Castiel could see how tight Gabriel's smirk was.

"You walked out and left her to – "

"Oh, please! What was I supposed to do?"

"You could have refused the betrothal!"

"What, like you did?" There was a such a bitter snap in that, that Dean blinked and he could see that Castiel was taken aback too. Gabriel's mouth twisted angrily. "You hitched a ride on the celibacy wagon, and got a pat on the back from our old man! No such option for me. Well, like hell was I going to hang around and be told who to marry and what to do for the rest of my life!"

"You didn't have to humiliate that girl and leave your mother to take the blame!"

"Trust me, my mother can take care of herself. Besides, what do you know about any of it? You weren't there! You went off to the temple without a single look back, and then Anna left too! Where did that leave me? Stuck with Father and the twins, and their constant scheming! No, thank you – I wanted more than that, and I knew the only way I was going to get it was to take it."

"Are – are you blaming _me_ for this? And _Anna?_ You've always been unthinking and irresponsible and – "

"Cas," Dean said, watching Gabriel worriedly. Despite his defiance, the smaller man looked braced, as though he was expecting a blow any minute. Dean didn't believe for one minute that Castiel would hit his brother, but he wasn't sure that _Gabriel_ knew that.

Eslan suddenly stepped between the brothers, disrupting the quarrel with his sheer bulk, and firmly nudged Castiel towards Dean. Dean didn't need the look the Companion gave him; he grabbed Castiel by the arms and held him fast when he would have tried to dodge around Eslan to continue the argument.

"Hey Cas – Cas! Come on, let it go, man. That's enough."

"You don't understand, he never takes responsibility – "

"And maybe you're right, I'm not gonna argue with that, but maybe you should consider that _he's_ right too."

"What?" The look of betrayal Castiel gave him hurt.

"Hey, come on now, be reasonable! He's not wrong, is he? Once you left home, how _do_ you know what went down?"

Castiel fumed and tried to look away, but Dean ducked his head and forced him to keep eye contact. He was aware of a muffled _Hey!_ in the background, but he ignored it. After a moment or two, Castiel's shoulders slumped.

 _You don't know what he was like_. This was accompanied by a whole montage of memories of tricks and teasing and every conceivable flavour of wild behaviour, and the associated misery of both enduring it and trying to hide it from parental eyes. _This is just more of the same._

 _Maybe. And maybe he was trying to cover up how much he was really hurting._ Dean wordlessly showed him what he'd just seen – Gabriel flinching and bracing himself like a dog waiting for a beating. "Come on, let it go," he repeated. "He's your brother; don't be like this. Not at Spring Festival."

"You don't need to remind _me_ that he's my brother," Castiel said petulantly, but he shrugged Dean's hands off and straightened his shoulders huffily.

When Dean looked around, he saw that Gabriel had tried to make an escape but had been foiled by Eslan, who had the sleeve of his shirt held firmly between his teeth. He looked resigned but apprehensive when Castiel confronted him again.

They stared at each other for an interminable moment.

"I missed you when you left home," Gabriel offered finally, looking as though he expected to get punched for saying it. Castiel's expression suggested that he was certainly considering it.

"You have the most bizarre way of showing it," he grumbled instead, and Gabriel's mouth twitched.

_Good! Now you hug him._

_You must be joking._

_Nope. That's what brothers do._

_Very well, but if he puts cockroaches in my shirt I am holding you responsible._

It looked as awkward as hell, but Dean noticed that neither of them actually tried to back out of doing it, which said a lot to him.

Then Father Joe was reminding them that the procession would be starting very soon – all the while shooting anxious looks between Castiel and Gabriel – and Eslan made it clear that he was ready to receive his temporarily-divine passenger, so Castiel lifted the little girl in the apple-green robe up into the saddle while the priest got all the other children organised behind the Companion.

At the last minute, Gabriel produced a bouquet of spring flowers out of his sleeve, like a conjurer, and presented them to the little 'goddess', who looked utterly thrilled. Then Eslan set off, with Castiel and Father Joe on either side of him, and Dean fell in behind with Gabriel and Kali.

It ought to have felt awkward, but the strange thing was that it didn't.

 

xXx

 

The route of the procession was well-established, passing through all of the major streets in the Strangers Quarter until it reached the Temple of the Maiden, roughly at mid-afternoon, where the High Priestess would be waiting, with representatives of most of the local sects, to greet, bless and garland all the goddesses and their attendants. Then she would declare spring to have officially arrived and command everyone to celebrate, at which point the party would begin in earnest.

Adam and Sam were waiting for the procession to pass near the Roadhouse Inn with most of their friends from the streets nearby, and Dean hugged them both, delighted that they'd arrived in good time. Sam had brought Jessica with him, much to the interest of Dean's neighbours, but she was bearing the scrutiny with good humour.

And Sam seemed to have cheered up a little. He even smirked at Dean as he tugged playfully on his braces. "Hey Dean," he said, "nice outfit."

"You can shut up," Dean told him, "they're traditional, alright?" But he grinned too.

"No really, they suit you."

"Seriously, you can shut up now."

Jessica laughed at them, and Dean winked at her. She was wearing a dress for a change, which he decided shouldn't go unremarked upon.

"You look real pretty, Jess … remind me why you're slummin' it with _this_ moose?"

"Hey!"

Jessica raised an eyebrow at him. "I could ask you the same question."

"I am right here," Sam protested.

Dean chuckled. "Not me, sweetheart, I'm slummin' it with this guy," and he gestured to Castiel, who had just appeared at his shoulder.

Castiel gave him an unimpressed look. "I have no idea what you're saying about me, but I'm sure it's offensive."

"Wow, you gonna hold a grudge now?" Dean smirked at him.

"It seems like the wisest course of action."

"Hey, Castiel … you're back," Sam said, smiling at him awkwardly.

"Hello, Sam. How are you?"

"Oh, I'm pretty good, thanks." Sam ducked his head.

"What have you done with Gabriel?" Dean asked.

Castiel glared. "Nothing!"

Sam looked up, surprised. "Gabriel? Did you find your brother after all?"

"Oh yeah," Dean said, before Castiel could respond. "Turns out he was the guy with the dancing goat."

"A dancing goat? Really?" Adam looked delighted. "I've got to see that."

"It's a goat in a dress," Dean said. "Why would you – wait, am I actually related to you?"

"I don't know why I didn't realise that was Gabriel from the start," Castiel said, in a tone of deep disgust. "Who else would have a dancing goat?"

"My kid brother, by the sound of it."

"I didn't say I _wanted_ a dancing goat – "

"It probably takes a lot of skill to train a goat to dance," Jessica offered, her eyes dancing.

"In the interests of … I don't know, _something_ ," Dean said, holding his hands up, "there is no evidence that the goat can actually dance. So far, all we know for sure is she wears a stupid dress and bells, and she's real good at escaping."

Castiel snorted in a derogatory way, and Dean was hard-pressed to swallow a laugh.

"You found your brother though," Sam said to Castiel, bemused. "That's a good thing, right?"

"That's debateable," Castiel grumbled.

"But I thought you wanted to find him?"

"No, his mother wants to find him. And I'm strongly minded to tell her where he is!"

Sam and the others looked at Dean questioningly, who shrugged, grinning. "Don't look at me, it's family stuff. The guy's been hanging out with a dancing goat and a self-styled goddess of death. What's not to love?"

"He constructed a flea circus when we were children," Castiel said resentfully.

"I saw one of those at a faire once," Jessica said. "It was really clever!"

"Er … you know it's not real fleas, right?" Adam told Castiel. "It's all done with wires and stuff."

"Yes, I know that _now!_ "

The laugh was getting really hard to contain. _Cas, you are making my day here!_

_Obviously I live to entertain you, Dean!_

But when Dean looked up, Castiel was grinning at him ruefully and he gave in to the laughter. He clapped Castiel on the shoulder and turned to the others.

"Come on, we should get in the procession or we'll miss the ceremony at the temple."

 

xXx

 

By late afternoon the celebration was in full swing, the narrow streets tightly packed with revellers. Dean lost sight of Sam, Jess and Adam after a while, but he wasn't worried about that; they would find each other again at some point. Castiel was a solid presence by his side, and that was good enough for him.

They wandered at random wherever the mood took them; joined huge shifting circles of dancers around well-heads in courtyards; bought sweet, sticky, fried pastry twists and skewers of spiced chicken to eat, washed down with pale beer; received handmade good-luck charms from earnest grandmothers; and listened to musicians and storytellers sitting in doorways.

Dean only realised that Castiel had been subtly guiding him in a particular direction when the other man suddenly grasped his wrist and pulled him into a narrow side alley, through a gateway and then a door, and into the dark rear entrance of what was probably a tavern - the kind with rooms to rent, which became apparent when Castiel tugged him in the direction of a staircase.

"Cas, what the hell - "

"You don't think the tavern-keeper loaned me his empty stall for nothing, did you? I took a room here for the night."

"You what?"

But Dean allowed himself to be drawn up the stairs and into a room that was similar in size and quality to those Ellen rented out at the Roadhouse Inn. The tavern was quiet around them, but that was hardly surprising. Just about everyone was out in the streets, singing, dancing, getting drunk, and eating greasy, salty, or over-sweetened foods. The taproom would probably get busy in a while but -

Castiel successfully cut off that line of thought by shutting and barring the door, and all but pouncing on Dean.

Dean laughed a little breathlessly. "You hired this place just so you could jump me?"

Castiel backed him up against the wall until they were practically nose to nose. "You have some objection?"

"No, but you could have saved yourself some coppers and jumped me at the Roadhouse instead."

"I prefer to lessen the chances of an interested audience on this occasion."

"Point," Dean conceded. Sometimes it felt like his life was a multi-part epic tale that was being enacted for the entertainment of Ellen's staff and customers.

They'd kissed before, but only quickly, furtively, all too aware of limited time, conflicting responsibilities, and prying eyes. But now they had time and privacy, and Dean was a tactile person at heart. The opportunity to enjoy the physical connection as well as the intimacy of the mental link was too good to be squandered.

Castiel pulled back at one point to look Dean solemnly in the eye, flushed and breathless as he was.

"You should know that I've never done this before," he said, his fists bunching up in Dean's shirt restlessly.

"What, and you think I have?"

"Dean."

Dean chuckled roughly. "Never with another guy, Cas."

"Ah, then this will be a learning experience for us both."

"You can call it that if you like," Dean said, twitching the lacings of Castiel's tunic undone and trying to tug it over his head. He was somewhat hampered by Castiel's efforts to work out the fastenings of his decorative braces.

"Why, what do you call it?"

Dean paused to catch his mouth in a fierce kiss. "I call it a good time. Hopefully, the first of many."

Castiel's smile was like the sun coming out. "On that we can agree."

Dean grinned back, breathless and unexpectedly _thrilled_. "What are we waiting for then? Show me what you got."

 

xXx

 

"Hey, where did Eslan go?"

Castiel stirred sleepily, and reached out mentally to his Companion for a moment. "He says he's in a square a few streets away, one with a fountain … the children and Father Joe are still with him, and your brothers and Jessica." He paused. "Gabriel is there too, telling them all stories. Eslan says he's looking forward to seeing the goat dance later."

Dean stretched a little, drowsy and contented. "Sounds like they don't need us then."

Castiel smiled. "No, we're fine where we are."

They went back to sleep.

 

**_~ finis ~_ **

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, some of the Heralds are SHIELD agents. If you've made it this far, surely that's the least of your worries!


End file.
